


Where The Ladder Starts

by Moorishflower



Category: Supernatural, Supernatural RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, RPS - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:08:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moorishflower/pseuds/Moorishflower
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After losing his fiancee in a fire, Sam Winchester packs up everything he needs, sells everything he doesn't, and moves from sunny Stanford to loud and muggy Philadelphia, where he uses what little money he has left to open a bookstore. There he meets Becky Rosen, fan of the popular Supernatural comic series and aspiring writer, and the two become good, if unlikely, friends. But as Becky begins to write her first ever fantasy romance novel, Sam's life takes a turn for the fictional when he finds an amnesiac man in an alley near his store.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginning

  
"_So I had this amazing idea for a new story, you know I've been trying to branch out into original fiction, right? I told you that a few weeks ago, remember? Anyways, it's gonna be a romance, but! But! It's gonna be fantasy! Well, sort of fantasy. See, the one guy is an angel. Not like, fluffy wings and halos and harps sort of angel, but a real Old Testament vengeance-y sort of guy. I need to look up some names. Michael? Nah, overdone. And that movie sucked. But the other guy, he's human. And you see, the angel doesn't really care about people, doesn't really see the point. Sort of like the story about the fall of Lucifer. So God sends the angel to Earth where he has to spend a year as a mortal. Or like, reduced powers. Angel lite. And it's like Terminator, he sort of plummets to the Earth like a meteor and ends up naked somewhere. And this other guy, he's out doing something, and he finds this naked dude in an alley and takes him home. And the story's gonna be about how they have to overcome these huge differences between how they think and you know, the whole angel thing, and…_"

"Becky," Sam says. "Breathe."

He hears her pause, can picture it in his head: Becky, hunched over her laptop with a Pepsi in one hand and her cell phone in the other, staring determinedly down at her keyboard and forcing herself to take deep breaths. Sometimes she gets carried away. Sometimes she forgets that not everyone can keep up with the way she thinks, half-skips and pop culture references, sometimes without any apparent rhyme or reason. She forgets that the world revolves at a slower pace than her.

"_Sorry,_" she says; Sam counted five deep breaths, which means that she's more worked up about this idea than she has been about…about anything else she's come up with for the past few months. "_I got excited._"

"I can hear that. Where are you?"

"_I'm waiting for the bus. It's Thursday. Thursday is new comic day._"

_Ah_, Sam thinks, and amends his mental image so that Becky is sitting hunched over a worn notebook instead, a bottle of Pepsi tucked into her tote bag, the phone cradled between her shoulder and cheek. "They released the new volume of Supernatural, huh?"

"_Yes! Yes, and it looks amazing and I can't wait to read it!_"

"Getting out of the apartment is important," Sam agrees, and carefully shelves the last of the thirteen volumes of Lord Byron. He still has dozens of new orders to comb through, and he needs to mark down a few of the older books and put a price to the newest ones, and he has to remember to call Ash later because he's running out of shelves and he's still got a whole wall that needs to be covered, but…

But he thinks he's getting the hang of this. Running a business. Being alone.

"_Sam?_"

"Yeah," he says, "Still here." He steps down off his footstool, absently kicking it back into the corner.

"_Are you all right? It isn't, you know…a bad day?_"

_A bad day_. A bad day used to be a day when he forgot to set his alarm and was late getting to class. A bad day used to mean a C, rather than a B, on an assignment. A bad day had been him and Dean in the same room, talking about Dad, which had inevitably lead to shouting, and sometimes to half-thrown punches, though more often than not just the yelling, the endless arguments, the disappointment.

Now, a bad day is any day that he wakes up and happens to remember, without preparing himself first, that his fiancée is dead.

"No," he says quickly. "No, it's…fine. I'm fine."

"_Are you sure? I can always get the new volume online! Or…or wait until tomorrow to buy it! Do you want me to come over?_"

He laughs before he can stop himself, and it's so easy to imagine Becky's startled expression – the absolute wonder at being able to make Sam smile, or even glance her way. From what he knows (and it isn't much, because she's even more private than he is), Becky has never been the type of person to have many friends – not outside of her forums and LiveJournal communities, anyways – and she treats his continued friendship with her the same way a puppy treats a new toy, with a sort of mingled excitement and suspicion, and the vague sense that it can be taken from her at any moment.

Sometimes it hits him, how sad that is. How lonely. But trying to understand how Becky works on more than just a surface level would be attempting to unravel a ball of issues large enough to rival Sam's own, and Becky has hinted, strongly, that he shouldn't try.

"It's okay, Becky," he murmurs. "It's no big deal. Not a bad day, just slow." It's the lunch rush, and no one is going to be coming in to buy books when they could be visiting the Subway across the street, so Sam settles behind the front counter and fishes around in his TO READ pile until he finds a book of poems that he hasn't already memorized cover to cover. Allen Ginsberg. _Huh_.

"_The bus is here! All right, I'm gonna get the new volume and then I'll be right over, okay? Right over!_"

Sam barely manages to make a noise of protest before the line goes dead. He had asked Becky's ex-boyfriend, once, had tried to bring up the subjects of bipolar disorder and ADHD as gently and tastefully as possible, but Chuck had laughed and shook his head. Becky didn't pop pills – Becky self-medicated with caffeine and crashed quietly in secret places, places where she was unlikely to be a bother while she rode out the withdrawal. It wasn't any sort of problem, as far as anyone had ever been able to figure out, and while it kept her solitary, it didn't prevent her from holding a job or picking up groceries or going to see movies on the weekends. Becky was just…Becky.

Sam turns off his cell, then tucks it into his pocket and opens _Cosmopolitan Greetings_ to the title page.

~

Becky cracks her knuckles and then sets her forearms down on the edge of her desk, getting herself comfortable. She has her two-liter bottle of Pepsi in the cup holder next to the printer, and she has her notebooks, all six of them, stacked neatly by the keyboard, within grabbing reach, so that she can flip through and look at the outlines she's made. She has her wrist brace in the bottom drawer of the desk (just in case!), and she has three fourteen-ounce bags of Skittles placed strategically around the base of her chair.

_Once upon a time,_ she types.

No. Too pedestrian. When you start a story with 'once upon a time,' you're either a total noob or a crazy fantastic genius, and Becky is neither.

Highlight. Delete.

_It is a truth universally acknowledged…_

What is she, a hack? She can do better than quoting Austen, especially considering she isn't doing a re-imagining of the original story. Delete, delete, delete.

_When he was young, Jared Wesson had always assumed that it would be his best friend, Jensen, who ended up doing volunteer work. Not for any altruistic reasons, but because Jensen liked getting into trouble, and the consequences had never been severe enough or frequent enough to discourage him. But growing up changed people, and what he had assumed at sixteen had become true at twenty-four – but for him, not for Jensen._

Becky pauses to take a swig of Pepsi, then cautiously lifts up her laptop, wondering where those names had come from. Yeah, she has 'Jared' written down, underlined a few times. She'd been meaning to look it up, do a little more research. But 'Jensen' is a new one.

_Jensen Smith,_ she types, and thinks about how the name looks on the page. "Jensen Smith," she says. It sounds good. "Jared Wesson." Smith and Wesson. She wonders if Sam will think it's an homage to him. That would be nice. Sam is always doing so much to help her – he comes over sometimes and cooks her dinner when she forgets to eat (although she's proud to say that she never forgets to do her shopping!), and he calls every two days, like clockwork, just to talk to her. Even if she's already called him like, fifty times in between. Sam is a good friend. She's lucky to have him.

She scrolls back up to the title page, where the big Working Title glares disapprovingly at her. She types, just beneath it, _For Sam_.

And then, after some thought, _You'll find your angel, too._

It's totally not offensive to dedicate your first slash novel to your straight best friend, right? All she wants is for him to find someone he can be with. Someone to make him forget Jessica. Or move on from her, or whatever the socially accepted term is. She wants him to be _happy_.

She scrolls back down. She can work on the introduction later. She knows a few writers who do that, just write straight through to the end, but she usually ends up finishing bits and pieces and then sewing them all together.

Plus, she wants to write about the first meeting.

She fits her fingers to the keyboard. _Usually, when you encountered a naked man on the streets of Los Angeles, you backed away slowly (if he approached you), or walked away quickly (if he didn't), or, if you weren't in a position to do either of those things, you just ignored it as best you could and filed it away in your 'I live in the city, shit happens' mental folder. Jared, who could be called a good Samaritan on his best days and a little naïve on his worst, did none of those things, and instead of pursuing the sensible option of returning to his apartment and forgetting the incident had ever happened, he did the unthinkable._

He got involved.

~

It's a Friday, and Friday means the evening rush – and by 'rush' Sam means the four or five regulars who come 'round like clockwork for their end of the week literature fix. He has the new Grisham novel arranged in neat piles on the front table, and a few Patterson books leading the way back to the mystery and thriller section, and Sam is all set to ride out the (admittedly minor) wave of customers and then close up for the day.

Or, he would be, if there were customers.

He rests his chin in his palm and stares out the window; outside, the sky is a dark lilac bruise, the billowing heaps of rain clouds obscuring the horizon, and if he concentrates, he imagines that he can smell the rain, how it's almost here, thick and heavy in the air. It's a watercolor still life of Philadelphia in the spring – the only things moving are the cars.

A few warning drops spatter the pavement outside, as if in answer to his thoughts. No one is going to be coming in when it's raining – that's what the Barnes &amp; Noble downtown is for, with the reading section and the coffee bar. Sam blows a strand of hair from his eyes (Jesus fuck, he really needs a haircut, but it just…hasn't been on his to-do list), then gets up and flips the sign on the front door to Closed!. He carefully empties the register, bills neatly folded into an envelope to be dropped off at the bank, coins left to be used as change. He draws the blinds down, blocking out the misty evening light. He locks the back door, and then gathers up his jacket, his duffle of books he still wants to read (the fun part of owning your own shop - unsold books at the end of each month). Friday evening has been slow, which means he needs to open early in the morning – it always amazes him, that there are so many tourists in Philadelphia, but there are, and a small, independent bookshop like Sam's draws their attention on the weekends.

He locks the front door behind him, and then steps out into the damp night.

It isn't pouring, not yet, but it's threatening to – the clouds are like angry sores in the sky, and Sam flips his collar against the damp. He left his Cavalier in the car park on Sansom Street – Five Star Parking was closer, but he'd been in a hurry, and he would have had to wait, so now he has to walk a few blocks just so that he can drive home. Living in the city is exciting, sometimes, but the aggravation makes it seem ten times worse than it actually is.

He's just turning off of Chestnut when he hears the groan.

It's barely there – like hearing the shadow of a noise, and Sam almost ignores it. The aggravations of living in Philly don't just extend to the traffic and the parking. He thinks there might be a bar nearby (he doesn't go out, so he isn't sure), so maybe it's just some poor drunk weaving his way home.

The streets seem emptier than they should be. The rain starts coming down in bullet-sized drops, heavy and oppressive. Sam flicks water from the curve of his nose, and then, cursing himself for about five different kinds of an idiot, he leaves the relative safety of the well-lit street and steps into the dark space between buildings, not quite an alley, but close - a narrow crack in the electric lights and the flashy storefronts, snug between a Mexican restaurant and a Salvation Army.

"Hello?" He says, because that's probably what a lot of people say, right before they're _mugged_. Jesus Christ, he's an _idiot_. "Is someone there?"

But that's definitely the sound of someone in pain.

_You're going to regret this,_ a voice in his head informs him – it sounds uncomfortably like Dean. Sam shakes it off, and dares to get close enough that he can see the shape of shoulders, hunched against the rain. _Bare_ shoulders. He makes a noise that's probably remarkably similar in register to like, a Chihuahua or a dolphin or something, and the shoulders shift, and yeah, it's a guy. A guy who's shirtless in the rain. A guy with…fuck, with scrapes all up and down his arms and what looks like the mother of all knots forming on his right temple. Sam shoulders his bag of books (effectiveness in a fight: four, if he can swing it hard enough), squatting a few feet away from the dude. It's hard to tell, what with the rain and the…the _blood_, but Sam thinks he's probably in his thirties. He doesn't look that much older.

"Hey," he says softly, and brown eyes wobble into focus, honing in on Sam's face. They stare at each other for what has to be at least a minute. And really, that color isn't…_brown_, not really. It's way too rich. It's like…scotch or bourbon, some kind of cask-aged alcohol that tastes like cedar and chocolate. It's almost _amber_.

Then the guy leans to the side and pukes into a storm drain, and Sam thinks he remembers something about head wounds making you nauseous. The rain sluices over his neck and back, soaking his hair, washing blood from his skin – Sam catches a glimpse of a dark shape across the blades of his shoulders. More blood, probably. Someone did a number on this guy.

"Okay," he says, and sort of crab walks a little closer, wincing when the guy wipes the back of his hand across his mouth, smearing blood across his lips and cheek. He spits, and then tilts his head up into the rain, swaying a little. Close up, Sam can see that his arms aren't the only things that have been through hell – it looks like someone took a fucking _baseball bat_ to the guy's chest and sides. He's wearing black dress pants, the kind that you have professionally laundered because your work is too important to ignore even for a half-hour of ironing. The pockets are turned inside out.

Sam fumbles in his own pocket for his cell phone. "I'm gonna call nine-one-one," he tells the guy. He gets another groan in response; Sam mashes his fingers against the buttons, and wonders why, in a city full of people who hurt and get hurt every single day, this one half-naked, helpless, soaking wet dude is the one that's tugging at Sam's heartstrings.

~

_"Rikbiel, okay? They call me Rikbiel." The man's mouth was pulled into a frown, the sort of severe expression that Jared had gotten used to, growing up with Jensen – except usually it wasn't directed at him. Nor was it usually worn by a guy standing naked in an alley between a Taco Bell and a store that sold vintage t-shirts. Jared caught his gaze drifting, and then forced himself to look Rikbiel – and what kind of name was Rikbiel, anyways? – in the eye._

"Um," Jared said. "All right, Rik – Rich. Can I just call you Rich? I think you might be confused."

"I wish I was confused," Rich said. There was a low, growling snarl in his voice that was doing things, vaguely uncomfortable things, to Jared's stomach. "Believe me, the last thing I want to be doing is throwing myself on the mercy of some idiot mud-monkey."

Jared had the feeling that he should probably take offense, but it wasn't said like an insult, not exactly. Just…like it was a fact. And he guessed, if he looked at it objectively, humans were primates, and the Earth was, you know. Covered in dirt.

He could hear Jensen's voice scolding him: 'You are almost disturbingly well-adjusted.'

"So you're an angel," Jared said. He purposefully didn't add on the second half of that thought, 'Or you think you're an angel.'

"That's what I've been telling you." Rich looked down at himself, still scowling, like what he was seeing didn't live up to his expectations. Everything looked in fine shape to Jared, but he had a thing for short guys anyways. The curse (or blessing) of being tall.

Becky pauses, gnawing on her bottom lip. She wasn't sure when she had decided that Jared was going to be _tall_. Like, Sam-tall? Sam is like, a skyscraper compared to her, though. Compared to most people.

Six feet, three inches. That's a nice number. It's one inch shorter than Sam. And three is half of six! Becky makes a note in her character outline.

~

"_Sammy? It's Dean. Just calling to say, uh…Hi, I guess. And to tell you that I'm…I'm coming home. I know it's been a while since we talked, but I…_"

A cough. Someone murmuring in the background, low and soothing.

"_I've missed you. Fallujah is really fucking hot, dude, and there's like a billion different mosques here. You like religious shit – _" Muffled scolding. "_No, I'm not calling mosques shit, Jesus Christ. Um. I took pictures for you. And I bought you this little, like, I dunno. Some kind of rug. I think it's for praying on. My friend said that if you liked pictures, you'd like the rug, too, so blame him._

"_Uh, that reminds me. I kinda brought my friend back with me. His girlfriend – fuck, Cas, fine – his roommate kicked him out when he said he was going to enlist, so he's staying with me for a while. Plane arrives in Philly at two on the twenty-ninth, all right? I mean, if you can't come and see us, that's cool. Just…call me back, Sam. Let me know how you're doing._"

End of message.

~

"Everything," Sam repeats, and the nurse stares at him like he might be an idiot. Maybe he is. "I mean…_everything_?"

"No wallet," the nurse repeats. "No business cards, no phone, no identifying tattoos, nothing."

"But you said that he knows his name."

"He knows _a_ name," she corrects. She told Sam her name not even ten minutes ago – he can't remember it. "Says his name is Gabriel, but that could just as easily be something he heard while he was laying in that alley. Head trauma does funny things to you, sometimes."

She levels Sam with a gaze that he suspects would be 'suspiciously hostile' on anyone else, but this woman is young, for all that she's wearing at the edges, and Sam can still see streaks of bright red fading from her ponytail. He can't find it in himself to be intimidated by this girl who's most likely just graduated from nursing school.

"He's been asking for you," she says, after a long moment of contrary silence. Sam stares.

"For me?

"For the 'guy who brought him in,' yes."

"If he's been asking for me, I can go in and see him, right?"

The nurse shrugs. "If it's that important to you. I'll tell you right now, though, he's probably homeless. Maybe crazy. You don't have any reason to stay."

He doesn't, he really doesn't. He's done his civic duty, he's…Jesus, he's given his whole _evening_ up to this guy, making sure he got to the hospital okay, filling out forms for him, and then sitting in the waiting room for like _two freaking hours_ while doctors poked and prodded at the guy's head and basically said 'We have no idea what's wrong with him.'

Which is an exaggeration, because he has a concussion. Obviously. Some sort of…of trauma-induced amnesia. Sam's no doctor, but even he can see that much is true.

_Amnesia_. His life has officially become a soap opera.

"What room is he in," he says, and the nurse blows a strand of hair from her eyes.

"Two-oh-four," she says reluctantly.

Sam heads for the stairs – the elevators are full of people with canes and crutches and walkers, and he doesn't want to wait for them to shuffle to the side so that he can fit in the cars with them. He takes the steps two at a time, and bursts into room 204 like he's…what? Like he's expecting something awful. Like he'll step over the threshold and he'll see Gabriel (and that might not even be his _real_ name) like, on fire. Struggling weakly against a prowler who's climbed in through the third floor window. Yeah, that's exactly what he's imagining. Disaster.

But it's just a white room, and a small man lying in a bed. He looks…better, maybe. The huge knot that had been decorating his skull has been covered with about a half-inch of layered bandages, and the scrapes up and down his forearms, probably from where he'd been thrown to the ground, have been taped over with gauze.

There's a neat row of stitches on his left arm. Sam stares at them. He counts six. He fell out of a tree when he was ten, broke his wrist and banged his head and needed _thirteen_ stitches – so six aren't that bad.

The guy – Gabriel – turns his head towards the door, and…and his eyes aren't just brown, like Sam had thought. Cleaned up, and out of the darkness of the alley, they're damn near _gold_. Sam's breath catches somewhere in his throat, and he exhales shakily as Gabriel examines him.

"They," he says, and his voice cracks, so he coughs until talking feels normal again. "They, uh, told me that you were asking for me. I'm Sam. Sam Winchester."

Gabriel tilts his head. "You're the only thing that's familiar, right now."

Sam takes a halting step forward and then, when Gabriel doesn't immediately object, he drops down into the visitor's chair next to the bed. Gabriel reaches for the pitcher of water on the little table next to him, the plastic cup, and Sam nearly trips over himself trying to get it ready first. Gabriel smiles like it's the most amusing thing he's seen all day. It probably is.

"I'm brain-damaged, not an invalid," he says, and Sam watches him pour his own water, hands a little unsteady, but he covers it well.

"They keep telling me I don't have any identification," he complains. "I know my own goddamn name. Not…" His brows furrow. "Not much more than that, but I know my name."

"Gabriel," Sam says.

"That's me."

Sam studies him, this unassuming man, all tans and honey-golds against the mint green hospital sheets. He looks as desperately out of place as Sam feels. There's a clipboard, attached to the foot of his bed – Sam leans over to pick it up, flipping through what little information they've managed to collect. Gabriel is approximately thirty-seven or thirty-eight. He weighs a hundred and ninety-six pounds. Aside from the amnesia and the physical injuries, there isn't anything wrong with him. He's a perfectly healthy, ordinary human being, and he just…

He doesn't have anywhere to go.

"They're going through some kind of database," Gabriel says, like he can read Sam's mind, or maybe just his expression, but either way it's…disconcerting. Jess had been able to do that. "Looking for my picture or my stats or…something. Missing person reports."

Sam puts the clipboard down. "Has there been any luck?"

"Nah. But it hasn't even been a day yet. Something'll turn up."

But Gabriel doesn't look so sure. Sam scoots his chair a little closer, resting his elbows on his knees. Gabriel slants a glance at him, at the way Sam folds himself into the chair like he's trying to become smaller, and Sam's always done that, ever since he hit his growth spurt at fourteen and suddenly he was ducking his head whenever he got onto the school bus in the morning. He read an article, once, about how people are genetically hard-wired to respond favorably to tall guys – that men who are six foot get better jobs, bigger raises, and hotter women on a regular basis. He thinks some of that might be bullshit, though, because he's looking at Gabriel and he can't see any reasons why those sorts of things would be denied to him.

"So they're…what, going to keep you here until they figure out who you are?"

"I guess. I don't have anywhere else to go, do I? But I'll probably only be here for a few days. A week, at most."

Optimism is all well and good, but then there's placing your faith in a gaggle of largely dissatisfied nurses, and Sam doesn't think that's going to end well.

"Anyways," Gabriel continues. "I just wanted to say thanks, again. For everything you've done. Not a lot of…"

"You could stay with me," Sam blurts out. Too fast. It was way too fast and all Gabriel will have heard was a slur of consonants and he'll just _look_ at Sam, sort of not comprehending, and Sam will flee the room because holy crap, _awkward_. You don't just invite some strange dude to come and stay at your apartment. You _don't_. Well, maybe Dean would, but not Sam. Never Sam.

Gabriel's mouth closes, the soft click of his teeth loud in the room. He swallows. Sam very carefully averts his eyes.

"That sounds…" Gabriel sways to the right, towards Sam. "That's…you mean it?"

Sam shrugs, helplessly, and Gabriel's eyes narrow. "Is this because you feel…responsible, or some bullshit like that? I mean, there's a dozen different forms you have to fill out, and for all you know I snore or sleepwalk or I'm some kind of serial killer…"

"It just feels right," Sam says. And it does. God help him, but it does.

~

"_Hey, Sam! This is Becky – I don't know what's going on? But you said to call you later and so I called but you didn't answer so this is me calling you again, just in case. Is everything okay? Do you want me to come over? Or would that be me smothering you? I'm sorry if I'm being smothering! I just want to make sure that you're okay and I want to talk about my book! Oh my god, it's gonna be a book, Sam! Right now I'm writing a part where Jared – that's the human – takes the angel into his apartment for the first time! I'm really excited about this so I'm gonna go take some deep breaths and then I'll call you later, all right? Goodnight, Sam!_"

End of message.

  
"_Hey, Sam, it's Sarah…Sarah Blake, from the art gallery? I know you said you're interested in cubism, so I thought I'd give you a call and let you know that our new display is going to have some Severini pieces in it. We'll be opening on the twenty-ninth…and, maybe after, we could go and grab some coffee. There's that little café down the street we could go to. So just…call me back and let me know, all right? Goodbye._"

Message deleted.

~

"So this is my apartment," Sam says. He tosses his keys into the little bowl by the front door, hangs his coat up on the rack (a present from Becky, who had told him, in all seriousness, that "A home isn't a home until it has a coat rack"), and then turns, half afraid of what he's going to see on Gabriel's face. The pants he'd been wearing (now carted off to some police station, somewhere, or the hospital trash, he doesn't know) had been…not fancy, but nice. _Dressy_. Sam doesn't think he even owns dressy outfits, anymore. When Jess had died, he had only packed what he absolutely needed – jeans, shirts, his laptop, his books, and then he had fled California, utterly and completely sure that he was never going back.

Thinking about Jess, even in passing, is enough to send a spike of longing and sadness through him, fierce enough to steal his breath.

Gabriel looks at him like maybe he understands. Or maybe he doesn't see it at all.

"It's nice," he says, no hint of guile or mockery, and something in Sam's chest…eases. He realizes, with interest, that he hadn't felt this way when he first showed his apartment to Becky.

Becky, he supposes, is the sort of person he had never felt the need to impress in the first place. She's straightforward and simple and all she needs is a place to put her laptop and a cup to hold her soda. He likes people like Becky, even if he's never going to be one of them.

"It isn't much," he says, and watches Gabriel pluck at the clothes Sam had lent him. The hospital had provided a shirt, and pants, but they had been itchy and too small, and Gabriel had looked so freaking _forlorn_ about it that Sam had driven home in order to shuffle through his closet until he found something that would at least be warm, if not exactly tailored to Gabriel's frame. Now he's practically swimming in an old Stanford hoodie and a pair of Dean's sweatpants that Sam had forgotten he'd stolen, and for whatever reason the overall 'college chic' look…suits him.

Or maybe Sam's just projecting, because it's been a long time since he's seen anyone wandering around in his clothes, and even if this isn't Jess, it's _someone_.

"No, really," Gabriel says. He brushes past Sam on his way to examine the couch, Sam's tiny, shitty television, the shelves and shelves of books that cover almost every wall. Thankfully, he doesn't comment immediately on how much of a nerd Sam is. "It's really homey. It's…I dunno. I get the feeling that I don't have this. This sort of…comfortable place."

Gabriel tilts his head, a deep scowl line appearing between his brows. Just by looking at him, Sam can tell that Gabriel feels things deeper than other people do – joys and sorrows, both. There's that angry furrow, of course, but Sam's also noticed that the laugh lines at the corner of his eyes are just as deep. Like he doesn't know how to exist without feeling everything to the fullest extent.

Sam is glad that Dean isn't here. Dean would say something stupid like 'He probably cries after sex' and Sam would be struck dumb with the image of it. Dean has always been good at making him see things he doesn't want to see.

While Gabriel explores, Sam drifts into the kitchen, checking his answering machine and scowling when – speak of the devil – he hears Dean's voice. He rakes through his brain, and no, he isn't doing anything on the twenty-ninth, and besides, even if he were, Dean is _coming back_. And not only that, but he's coming to Philadelphia, instead of Lawrence, and Sam knows that Dean hates Pennsylvania, hates the humidity and the press of people. He could have chosen to go straight back to Lawrence, but instead he's coming _here_, to see _Sam_. With his friend, apparently, but Sam can't tell much from the scattered murmuring he can hear on the message.

The second one is from Becky, and he listens with half an ear as she talks. He'll remember to call her, later. Becky is usually pretty good about giving him his own space, but only when he _asks_ for it. She isn't very good at picking up social cues.

The third message gets deleted – the number isn't one he recognizes – as Gabriel wanders into the kitchen. He has essentially given himself the whole tour: Sam's apartment consists of the hallway that houses the bathroom, his bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen. There isn't much more to it than that.

"I like this place," Gabriel says. He's taken his shoes and socks off, and the weirdly delicate arch of his feet draws Sam's attention for a half-second. It probably says a lot about what kind of person Gabriel is, that he feels comfortable enough to walk barefoot around an apartment that isn't his, around a man he's just met. But Sam doesn't know a lot about that kind of stuff.

"Sam." He sounds hesitant. "Could you…help me with these bandages?" Gabriel gestures towards the ones that are wrapped around his head. Sam doesn't quite understand them – it's a lump, not a gaping wound – but he understands the desire to get them off. So he steps forward, careful to avoid Gabriel's bare feet, and pulls at the hospital tape until it gives way with a sound like Velcro. He unwinds the bandages, Gabriel blinking serenely in the direction of his collarbone, until he has them all balled up in his palm, a little sweaty, a few spots of blood here and there. Gabriel's right temple is covered with a deep, purple-black bruise, but the swelling has gone down. It looks…well. It looks worse than before, but Sam knows it's in the process of healing.

"Thanks," Gabriel says, and takes the bandages from Sam's suddenly limp hands. "Is there somewhere I can throw these out?"

Sam nearly breaks his neck showing Gabriel the trash can under the sink, and Gabriel just _looks_ at him, amused and maybe a little bit mocking, and Sam's okay with that, really, because he knows he probably looks like a huge idiot. It isn't really an insult if it's the truth.

"You try really hard," Gabriel notes as he tosses the bandages in the garbage. "More than most people."

Sam squints at him. "How do you mean?"

"Just…with everything. You don't know me. All you know are my circumstances, and you're still falling over yourself trying to make me…I don't know. At home."

"I want you to be comfortable," Sam protests, and Gabriel snorts.

"Yeah, like I said, I get the feeling that 'comfortable' isn't something I'm used to."

And that makes Sam sadder than it should. Because Gabriel is just _some guy_, and he'll probably be gone within the week, back to whatever life is waiting for him. He's probably married. Maybe he even has kids.

So Sam shouldn't get too attached. After all, it isn't like this is destiny or anything. Real life isn't like Becky's stories – peoples' soul mates don't just fall naked out of the sky.

~

_So this is living the dream, for humans," Rich said. He kicked the side of Jared's couch, and Jared would have snapped at him, except that couch was like a hundred years old and Jensen had kicked it and punched it and fallen on it so many times that Jared was starting to believe it was a Highlander. There was no other explanation for why it hadn't collapsed yet._

"Home sweet home," Jared said. He carefully moved his shitty coffee table out of the way, and then made a detour to the hall closet in order to drag out his air mattress. Sometimes Jensen needed a place to crash when he wasn't doing so well. Rich watched him the whole time, sort of vaguely suspicious but also…Jared wasn't sure, but that might have been fascination.

He kept picking at the stupid novelty hoodie Jared had gotten him, 'Proud Student of the Toronto Institute of Technology,' which left the word 'TIT' smeared in huge, block letters across Rich's chest. The sweatpants that he had hurriedly bought for him were about two sizes too big, and Rich was practically swimming in them. Jared eyed the smooth curve of an exposed hip, then swallowed and turned back to the air mattress. Where was the damn pump?

"So," he said conversationally. "Assuming that you're, you know, not some crazy homeless guy who's waiting to kill me in my sleep tonight…And assuming that everything you've said is true…why all this?" He gestured vaguely around his apartment. "The whole 'becoming human' thing."

"It's punishment," Rich said. "For lacking…compassion. Empathy. You've heard about the Fall of Lucifer?"

"Uh-huh." Jared had gone to church as a kid, mostly with his family, sometimes with Jensen's. Jensen, however, had never been particularly religious. "God told the angels to respect humanity and love them as they would love Him, and Lucifer threw a tantrum because he didn't like the new baby in the house."

"That's one way of putting it." When Jared cast his gaze back, Rich's mouth was curled in an almost-smile. "Let's just say…Lucifer and I agreed on a lot of things. But I love my Father. I don't have to like His decisions, but I'll respect them."

"Ah," Jared said. "So you are going to kill me in my sleep. Good to know."

He shivered as a sensation like fingertips ghosted across the back of his neck, but when he looked up again, Rich was examining the picture on the wall, of him and Jensen and Jensen's weird, possibly-an-alien friend, Misha. Jared liked Misha. It was entirely probable that the guy was the lovechild of Janis Joplin and Ted Nugent, and he was definitely a lunatic, but in a way where you didn't really mind, because he knew a lot of cool things. Like how to turn a coconut into a bong, and how to hotwire a car, and how to take apart a .40 caliber Glock 22 and then put it back together again in eight minutes or less.

"I won't be killing anyone tonight," Rich said softly. "Least of all you. You're my…" He hesitated, mulling over something, before settling on "…host."

Jared smacked the side of the air pump, humming in satisfaction as it rumbled to life. "Well. That's good to know."

Becky closes out of the Wikipedia page on water pipes, and then takes a sip of Pepsi. Her phone vibrates against her hip; she makes certain that the cap is screwed on tight before she sets her soda down and answers it.

"Hello? Ohmygod, Sam! You didn't call back right away, so I was kinda worried! You…wait, what? What happened?"

Becky listens as Sam explains, and then scrolls back up to the first meeting scene in her story, where Jared finds Rikbiel in the alley. She stares at it for a long, long moment.

"No, I'm still here," she says. "That's just kinda…weird, I guess. Half-naked guy in an alley." She wants to say that it's _really, really similar_ to what she's written, but she knows Sam believes in coincidences, and she doesn't, and he'll just tell her that sometimes the world is stupid and inconvenient that way. Sometimes real life mirrors fiction and it doesn't even mean anything.

She secretly thinks Sam is wrong, but she's never going to tell him that. He's had a hard enough life already. From what she's gleaned, his dad wasn't too happy about him going to college instead of joining the army or…or whatever branch the Winchesters were a part of. The Navy? She can ask later. But not now. Sam sounds like he doesn't really want to answer questions right now so much as he wants to ask them.

"I still have some of Chuck's clothes," she agrees slowly. And then, "Um, yeah. I can bring them over. But Chuck was really tiny, are you sure…? Like, how much? Okay…No, the pants will probably be a little long, but I think they'll fit. Yeah. I'll bring them over in the morning, will that be soon enough?" Sam babbles bewildered thanks into her ear, and then he hangs up. Becky holds out her phone and stares at it.

Then she drags out her notebook, and writes in the margins of Rikbiel's character sheet: 5'7"

~

Inbox: 3 messages

Re: 27th

From: Dean Winchester &lt;nexthefner123@yahoo.com&gt; _View Contact_  
To: Sam Winchester &lt;pietynorwit09@yahoo.com&gt;

_rug7843.jpg_

hey Sammy got ur message. Cas says i should send u a pic of the rug just 2 make sure u like it. it looks like any other rug 2 me but Cas says that the patterns might not agree with u or some shit like that i dunno.

looking forward 2 seeing u. i know it's been a long time and i know i was angry at dad's funeral but u weren't there and i was and it was hard, but dad said he stopped being angry @ u a long time ago.

Cas says i should get all of this off my chest and also he is watching me type this so it's sort of a hostage situation if you get my drghuv

Sam, my name is Castiel Novak and I was assigned to Dean's unit in Fallujah and we grew to be quite close. Your brother is very eager to be home and he is looking forward to mending your relationship. I hope you do not mind my presence in his life. – Castiel

Inbox: 2 messages

Novel!

From: Becky Rosen &lt;morethanbrothers@gmail.com&gt; _View Contact_  
To: Sam Winchester &lt;pietynorwit09@yahoo.com&gt;

_epicromance.doc_

Omg omg omg it's reached 9,000 WORDS and I haven't even gotten to the romance-y parts yet! These characters are SO MUCH FUN!

So I was wondering if you wouldn't mind looking over what I've got so far and letting me know about spelling/grammar errors and weird sentences and things like that. I used to ask Chuck to beta for me but slash wasn't his thing. You never seem to mind when I discuss it with you though. If you don't want to just let me know and I can send it to the girl who betas my fic!

How's your new houseguest doing? Is he cute? I'm gonna get a glimpse of him eventually!

Ask him if he likes SPN!

\- Becky &lt;3


	2. Middle

  
Sam makes the mistake of reading the first draft of Becky's story in the morning, at his kitchen table, while drinking coffee. Gabriel is in the living room, still zonked out on the couch – Becky had convinced him to buy one that folded out into a sort of mini-bed, and it's because he realizes exactly how much he owes her that he's reading her novel and ordering himself not to cringe. He's read some of her 'fanfic' before, and he loves her, he really does, but Becky is sort of predisposed towards purple prose, something that Sam has come to despise.

He's pleasantly surprised, though, by how much time she spends building up the characters: Jared Wesson, the main character, is easy to relate to. Jensen Smith reminds him of Dean. Sam gets the feeling that Becky might be drawing from real life, from _his_ life, for inspiration, but he can't feel upset about it when she's putting so much _effort_ into the characters, into making them their own people. He gets through the first two chapters, engrossed in the difficulties of Jared's life (he volunteers at a soup kitchen and makes his money by acting in commercials and playing minor characters in indie films, apparently). Gabriel makes a sleepy, uninhibited noise out in the living room, and Sam scrolls down to the third chapter just as his guest wanders into the kitchen.

Gabriel is wearing boxers that Sam had bought for him (because seriously, boxers are cheap, and it's the least he can do for a guy who's lost his memories), and one of the tank tops that Becky had dropped off two days ago. There's enough definition in his arms and calves that Sam thinks he probably jogs, or swims, but not in any serious way. Just a way to keep fit.

He also has a tattoo. Sam can see the edges of black ink poking out over his shoulder, arching up across the back of his neck, where his hair normally falls and obscures it. Sam can't tell what it is, though.

"Morning," he offers, making an effort not to stare at Gabriel's legs or arms or _anywhere else_, because that is just rude, really. Gabriel grunts at him, and stands for a moment in the middle of the kitchen, undecided. Then he shakes his head, slow, like he's clearing water from his ears, and makes a beeline for the coffeepot. He stares at it until Sam gets up and grabs a clean mug from the cupboard, setting it down on the counter. Gabriel looks vaguely surprised.

"G'morning," he says, finally. His voice is still heavy with sleep, kind of gravelly. Gabriel pours himself a cup of coffee while Sam sits back down, scanning the third chapter of Becky's story.

He takes a sip of his lukewarm coffee, and then promptly almost does a spit-take all over his laptop.

Becky had mentioned…okay. She had mentioned, before, her idea, this guy Jared finding some sort of…fallen angel? Or maybe just a guy who thought he was an angel? But Becky had specifically mentioned _naked, in an alley_, and Sam hadn't paid much attention to it. Becky likes naked people. He's pretty sure that she thinks clothes are the opiate of the masses, but that's beside the point.

The point: where the alley _is_. Between a Taco Bell and a vintage clothes shop. If Sam closes his eyes, he can still remember the smell of beans and rice and chicken that had wafted out from La Pequena Mexicana as he squatted beside Gabriel. And on the other side of them, the Salvation Army. And he's _seen_ that hoodie before, too – in some hipster store a few weeks ago. It's entirely plausible that Becky has seen the same store, they don't live all that far from each other, but…

_It's a coincidence,_ he tells himself; Gabriel drops into the chair across from him, coffee mug clutched between his fingers. _Coincidences happen all the time. It's just a…a…_

"Hey," Gabriel mumbles, and Sam blinks. He realizes, with some degree of embarrassment, that he might have been staring at his laptop and hyperventilating. Possibly. A little bit. Gabriel waves the hand that isn't clutching a mug at him, slow in the way that all things seem slow in the morning. Sam closes his laptop, crossing his wrists over it and refusing the temptation to _look_. To read more.

"You looked like you'd seen a ghost," Gabriel says. Hesitant. Like maybe he isn't sure that interrupting Sam was a good thing. "Real out of it. Kinda like me, I guess."

His lips spread in a smile, a combination of self-deprecation and smugness, something that Sam honestly hadn't thought was possible, except for, apparently, it is. He can't help but smile helplessly back. Gabriel has that sort of face, where you want to laugh just because it might make him laugh, too.

"It's just…my friend," Sam says haltingly. "She's a writer, and she sent me something to look over, and a part of it…startled me."

"In a good way or a bad way?"

Sam shakes his head. "There's a good way to be startled?"

"Well, yeah. When you learn something about yourself that you didn't know before, and at first you're pissed off, and it's not a good feeling, but then you accept it, and it gets better."

Gabriel sips his coffee while Sam tries to parse that out. He thinks he can imagine it. Can understand it, at least partially. "Those are deeper thoughts than I usually think at…" He checks the clock on the microwave. "…eight in the morning."

"I'm a regular Nietzsche," Gabriel says dryly, and Sam snorts into his coffee. A coincidence. That's all it is. Sometimes, life is weird like that. Sometimes life sees fit to take away your mother and your fiancée in house fires. Sometimes, life plays out like a really bad soap opera. That's just the way things are.

"You have a tattoo," Sam notes. He's not even going to pretend he isn't changing the subject. "I saw it before, but it was hard to make out. I thought it was blood."

Gabriel peers at him. "You were pretty quick to give me your jacket, too," he muses. "Huh. Tell me what it is?"

That must feel weird, knowing you have a tattoo, but not remembering what it is, or where, or even the reason you got it in the first place. So Sam doesn't judge when Gabriel slides his mug off to the side, then deftly grabs the hem of his tank top, pulling it carefully over his bandaged arms and chest. Sam has seen it before, but he still sucks in a soft breath when he sees the extent of the damage, the mottled brown and purple bruises spread across his shoulders, his sides, curving against his ribcage. When Gabriel twists around, his face contorts in an expression of profound discomfort. Sam's reaching out before he even recognizes what he's doing, laying his palms flat against Gabriel's sides and forcing him to keep still.

He doesn't realize how _wildly inappropriate_ he's being until Gabriel's breath hitches, muscles fluttering under Sam's hands.

"Oh," he says, and backtracks so fast he's surprised he doesn't go back in time. "Oh, Jesus, uh. Sorry. I mean."

"It's all right," Gabriel breathes. And then he turns around, and the breath that Sam has just taken to apologize yet again rushes out of him because holy shit. Oh, holy shit.

_Wings._

"So, what is it? Is it badass? Please don't tell me I have a chick tattoo."

Sam thinks back to a religious studies course, a requirement for his general education (and for an instant the memory of that time is a flare of pain behind his ribs, but then it vanishes, so quickly that he is very nearly startled), and remembers reading descriptions of angels from Judaism, from Christianity, from Islam. The image of the angel with the fluffy white wings and the golden harp is very much a Western tradition, reinforced by decades of cartoons and Sunday school lessons designed to make children _love_ God, not fear Him, but anyone who has ever picked up a Bible, or the Qur'an, or the Torah knows that angels are deadly, and fierce, and beautiful. Warriors of God. There had been a whole section in the class, on the differences between the texts.

Sam is reminded of that class now, looking at the sweeping arcs of black ink decorating Gabriel's shoulders. These aren't the wings of an angel from a cartoon, or illustrations from Sunday school books – Sam has a moment where he can actually _picture_ them, fully functional and huge and _glorious_. So bright they're cold as ice, vast and incomprehensible things made of sound and a furious, expansive love.

"No," he says faintly. "No, not a chick tattoo." He examines the span of Gabriel's shoulder blades, where the ink depicts slivers of bone emerging from the skin, from his _spine_. Like the wings are really attached, and not just etched onto his body. They're an elaborate mixture of tribal designs and realistic feathers, arching down the length of Gabriel's back and ending, curled, beneath the band of his sweat pants. And Sam is definitely not thinking about whether or not that design goes down any further. Definitely.

"So what the hell is it?" The only reason Gabriel isn't craning his neck to see is because it'll leave him sore for the rest of the day, so Sam clears his throat.

"It's…wings. Like, really…really elaborate wings. Like an angel's."

Oh Jesus, why did he have to go and compare them to an angel's? Because now the mental image is there, of the wings peeling back from Gabriel's skin and spreading like a shadow in the air, huge and magnificent and Sam _really_ needs to get out more, if this is what he's thinking about.

He wonders what Jessica would have thought of Gabriel. She always liked tattoos.

Gabriel shrugs and, after a long moment, he pulls his tank top back over his head, lets it fall around his hips, and the wings are once again mostly obscured. Sam breathes a sigh of relief – Gabriel looks at him funny, but he can't _not_ do it.

"Your phone has a camera," Gabriel points out. "Maybe later you can take a picture, huh? I kinda want to see."

"Right," Sam says. _Take a picture, it'll last longer._

~

Inbox: 1 message

Re: Novel!

From: Becky Rosen &lt;morethanbrothers@gmail.com&gt; _View Contact_  
To: Sam Winchester &lt;pietynorwit09@yahoo.com&gt;

_angel-wings-image.jpg_

I forgot to include it last time, but I actually have a mental image for Rikbiel's wings! I sketched them out (I'm a writer, not an artist, so no laughing!), so tell me what you think? I was sort of thinking of, like…frost and sound waves and thorn bushes when I drew them. It sort of took on a life of its own!

\- Becky &lt;3

**Hello Sam!**  
No unread emails in your inbox

Re: Novel!

From: Sam Winchester &lt;pietynorwit09@yahoo.com&gt; _View Contact_  
To: Becky Rosen &lt;morethanbrothers@gmail.com&gt;

Becky, have you been to my apartment lately? I mean…You haven't met Gabriel yet, right? You two haven't talked while I've been at work?

\- Sam

~

It's Saturday, the twenty-ninth of May, and Sam is sitting in a McDonald's food court in PHL, across from the gate that Dean is supposed to be arriving at. He stares mournfully at his Premium Southwest Salad (with grilled chicken), because Dean had said _two_, and it's nearing two-forty. And Sam isn't about to get up and just leave his brother in the middle of Philly, because Dean is used to the Middle East, and to Kansas, and the East Coast, in Sam's opinion, is a totally different animal from both of those. Philadelphia will eat Dean alive and then spit him out confused in the middle of Center City, and Sam will never see him again, ever.

Oh God, what if the flight was _early_. What if the flight was early and Dean thought he wasn't coming and now he's wandering around outside with his friend and he has _no idea_ what living in a big city is like, and meanwhile Gabriel is back at the apartment doing God knows what, maybe accidentally setting himself on fire (never mind that he seems perfectly competent in the kitchen, judging by the pancakes he made this morning), and…

"Sammy?"

And just like that, all his worries rush out of him, like a deflating balloon, and Sam turns away from his late lunch because the iceberg lettuce is wilted and the chicken is sort of chewy and Dean is so much better than half-assed fast food salad. He has about a three second window in which he catches glimpses of Dean's skin, his shorn hair, the heavy pack he carries on his shoulders, and then Sam is being dragged up out of his seat and pulled into a hug that threatens to crush his ribcage. Sam grunts as Dean's arms squeeze the life out of him for what has to be like _ten freaking minutes_ before letting go, letting Sam rock back on his heels and examine his brother _properly_.

Sam will never say that Iraq and Iran have been good to Dean. He opposed the war when it started, and he opposes it now, and he doesn't believe in sending too-young soldiers into the scorching desert to kill each other in order to perpetuate a fucking _lie_.

But Dean looks…good. He's long and tan and he's got dozens of new scars, nicks and scratches and shiny burn marks all up and down his forearms, but he's so obviously _happy_. And Sam really just wants to hug him again, get close to him and never let go, because it's been…

Jesus. It's been _five years_. He hasn't seen Dean since Dad's funeral, and then Dean had gone and enlisted for _another_ tour, maybe out of grief, maybe out of anger at Sam, but there had just…there'd never been any time, for them. And now Dean is _here_, and Sam never wants him to leave again. He's missed his big brother.

"It's good to see you, Sam," Dean says. And he's so floored by this, by them being within ten feet of each other and _not_ fighting, that he almost misses the quiet, unassuming man standing at Dean's side. Sam is surprised he didn't notice him earlier, but the guy just gives off that aura of _belonging_. With Dean, especially. Sam halfheartedly punches Dean in the shoulder (Dean barely _twitches_, and Christ, his muscles are like rocks now), and then offers his hand to the guy. He's got short, spiky hair and the bluest eyes Sam has ever seen.

"You must be Castiel Novak," he says, and the guy blinks at him – there's something birdlike about his movements, like there's an owl or a hawk trapped under his skin. His hand, when he slides it into Sam's, is small.

"Dean calls me Cas," the guy says, and Dean beams at him. Sam gets the feeling that this is something they've been working on for a while. "But…yes. And you're…Sam. It's good to meet you. Dean mentioned you often."

"Talking about what a pain in the ass I am, probably."

Dean turns his head, coughing, smothering the word _bitch_ into his palm. Sam smiles, because he isn't laboring under any false pretenses – Dean probably complained bitterly about him to anyone who would listen, and that's all right. They've both had a rough time of it.

"He always spoke fondly of you," Castiel amends. His voice is painfully earnest. _Jesus_, Sam thinks, because this guy is just way too guileless and _pristine_ for the horrors of the Iraq War. He wonders how he's managed to survive it.

"Awesome chick moment, guys," Dean interrupts, breaking their lingering handshake and then slinging an arm around Sam's shoulders, startling a laugh from his brother and a confused blink from Castiel. "But let's get the hell out of this place, because I have had _enough_ of planes."

"You'd think joining the army would cure you of that phobia."

"Marines, Sammy. There's a difference between the Army and the Marines."

"He spent the flight listening to Journey and not looking out the window. I believe clouds make him nervous," Castiel offers. There's a sort-of-smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and as soon as Dean whips his head around the expression vanishes. Sam thinks he's going to like this guy.

"Just…shut up," Dean says. "Seriously, Cas."

Sam laughs as he guides them out of the airport. "We should have lunch," he says, and Castiel nods sagely. "Order pizza while you guys take a break. We can talk about hotels in the area."

"You mean we don't get to crash at your place? Where's the love, Sammy?"

_Oh,_ Sam realizes, abruptly.

In all the excitement of Dean coming back, and Gabriel showing up, and then Becky and her _insane_ book, he thinks he might have, maybe, forgotten to tell Dean that he has a roommate now.

Oops?

~

_"Dude," Jensen said. "I mean, you told me you're hard-up, but isn't this taking things a little too far?"_

"He isn't a prostitute," Jared corrected, for what had to be at least the fifth time. Jensen, over the years, had turned Jared's celibacy into a sort of running joke between them and their small group of friends – to the point where, whenever Jared had anyone besides Jensen or Misha (and, by extension, Vicki and Danny) over to visit, the jokes about 'hired help' wouldn't be long in following. Jared rolled his eyes, carefully maneuvering around the slumbering figure of Rich on the air mattress. He slept at weird times – almost like he wasn't used to it. He would end up staying awake all night and part of the day, and then he would just…pass out wherever he happened to be standing, or sitting, or lying. And when he woke up, he always seemed…sort of mortified that it had happened at all.

There were times when Jared could look at him and think, yeah, maybe he was an angel. Or at least something…different.

"His name's Rich," Jared said softly. Jensen cocked his head, listening. "I found him on 2nd Street. He was…confused. And naked. And it was cold outside. So I took him to a free clinic and made sure he wasn't hurt, and I offered to let him stay with me for a little while."

"You're a fucking bleeding heart, you know that? He's probably homeless, Jay."

"That's what I thought…except he's smart, Jensen. He's really fucking smart. The other day? He was making fractal patterns out of Swiss cheese. And this morning he asked me what I thought about Nietzsche and whether I had 'considered the implications of humanity being an evolutionary step, rather than a pinnacle.' Like it was something that everyone should know."

"Did you tell him to fuck off?"

"What? No! We…talked. For a long time. And then he came in here and passed out and…" Jared buried a hand in his hair, sighing. "I don't know what to do. He's…he says he's an angel, Jen. He says he's a real, honest-to-God angel."

Jensen wandered into the kitchen, making a beeline for the fridge and pulling out a bottle of Molson's. "I'm the last person you want to ask about religious crap, man. But generally, when people tell you that they aren't human, they're either crazy, or they're that one dude Misha hangs out with. The one who thinks he's a wolf."

"Eric? Eric is nice. He gave me a pizza once."

"Doesn't change the fact that he thinks he's a fuckin' wolf." Jensen used his ring to pry open the beer, then took a long drink. When he'd finished, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and said, "Look, I'm not saying you should kick the guy out right away. It's your apartment, Jay, you can do whatever the fuck you want with it. I'm just saying…be careful. There are a lot of psychos in the world, you know?"

"I know," Jared murmured. "I just…I get the feeling he isn't one of them. He's…not easy to get along with at the best of times, but he's funny, too, and he's just…I like him, Jensen. I really do."

"Better be careful," Jensen said, cracking a grin. "You're starting to sound like you were with Sandy."

"Sandy called me a philandering douchebag and stole my radio because she saw me talking to a check-out clerk at the Giant. How is that anything like me and Rich?"

"Nah, I mean." Jensen shook his head. "You just sound like you're into him, is all. And don't even lie about it, man, I've known you since you were in diapers. I can tell when you want in someone's pants."

"That…that is so inappropriate, Jen, you don't even know."

"What's inappropriate?"

It figured, that the first time Jensen got to talk with Rich, one had just been woken up (and was less than charitable because of it), and one was planning on getting buzzed.

Because that was how Jared's life worked. Seriously.

~

It figures that Dean and Gabriel get along about as well as cats and dogs – the first thing that Gabriel does upon seeing Castiel is let out a long, low whistle of appreciation, making Cas blush (it only makes his eyes seem bluer) and Dean scowl. Gabriel immediately looks contrite, but Sam doubts that he's truly regretful. He doesn't seem the type to hold himself back.

"I'm so sorry," Gabriel says, "I have no idea what came over me. Has Sam told you everything?"

Castiel seems able to take the 'amnesia' excuse as what it is – an excuse, but one made without ill intent – but Dean makes sure to place himself between Castiel and Gabriel for the rest of the visit. Right now, Sam can hear them squabbling in the living room while he orders a pizza. Something about mushrooms. He decides to step back in and intervene before there's bloodshed.

"Your brother's a dick," Gabriel says, once Sam reappears, and Sam has been getting used to this side of Gabriel, this part of him that can be obnoxious and abrasive and very, very unpleasant when it wants to be. But Sam has never seen it directed at _people_ before, just minor annoyances – swearing at the television when the screen cuts out, becoming sullen when there's no more peanut butter with which to make sandwiches…This, though. This is new.

"He has his good points," Castiel says, coming to the rescue before Sam can snap at Gabriel or, even worse, before Dean can punch him in the neck. Which, judging by the vein throbbing at Dean's temple, had only been a few short seconds away from becoming a reality.

Gabriel shrugs, then neatly folds himself into as small a shape as he can on the end of the couch, feet tucked up underneath himself and shoulders relaxed to the point where Sam thinks he might just melt into the upholstery. Castiel looks impressed.

"You're quite flexible," he says, and Gabriel wiggles his fingers at him.

"Oh, go _on_. I bet you say that to all the pretty girls."

Dean twitches like a horse trying to shake off the fly, then gingerly paces around the couch, grabs Sam by the arm, and forcibly drags him back into the kitchen. Sam doesn't protest, because he doesn't want to interrupt Castiel and Gabriel, who, without the unhappy barrier of Dean, appear to be perfectly content to talk about…yoga?

"Explain, Sam," Dean says, and immediately goes to the fridge in order to rummage for a beer. There are only a few bottles of Corona, which Dean hates, but he pulls one out anyways and scowls at it, like the beer is somehow to blame for all his problems. Which had been the case with Dad, yeah, but not Dean.

"I already told you," Sam sighs. "It was raining, I was walking back to my car, and I heard a noise. So I went to check it out."

"Sammy, you can do shit like that in Kansas, but you _can't_ go around poking your face into alleys in a place like _this_."

"You're one to talk," he says mildly. "Poking your face into alleys in war zones."

Dean sullenly uses his ring to pop open the beer, then holds it like he's imagining it's Sam's neck. He doesn't prod further, and so Sam continues.

"I found Gabriel concussed, shirtless, and bleeding in the rain, Dean. What was I supposed to do, give him a dollar and go home?"

"_Yes_. That's what you do with homeless people, Sam! You feel sorry and you give them some change and then you forget about it."

"Cynic," Sam accuses. "And he isn't _homeless_. It's only been two weeks…the hospital called the other day and said they're trying the National databases now, not just Pennsylvania."

"And what happens when they don't find anything, Sammy? You gonna let this guy keep hanging around? You don't make that much money to begin with. If you'd just…"

"If you tell me to give the Marines a try I _am_ going to kick you out of my apartment," Sam growls. He's surprised at the vehemence in his voice. He's opposed to the idea of enlisting, sure, but…It's just that Dean comes in here and tries to tell him what to do in _Sam's own apartment_. As if Sam didn't already get enough of that from Dad.

Dean's expression is one of intense discomfort – they both have to look away from each other, just for a minute. Dean clears his throat.

"I'm just saying," he murmurs, "I'm…worried about you. Since Jessica…"

"I don't want to talk about Jess, Dean. She's gone, and Gabriel is here, and the two don't have _anything_ to do with each other."

Dean shrugs, sips his beer. "You've always been the type to…collect strays, is all. I don't want you to get in over your head…"

"Gabriel isn't a _stray_, Dean! He's a guy who needed help, and I stepped up and offered it! And you know what? I'm _glad_ that I did! Because I haven't had any nightmares for a whole week, and I'm finally sleeping more than five hours a night, and it's because of _him_. He's…"

Dean is looking at him, but not in the normal 'Oh Sam, what am I going to do with you' sort of way. It's a little bit appraising, a little skeptical, but mostly just…sad. Like Dean is seeing something that Sam isn't.

"It isn't like that," Sam says quickly. Because he isn't an idiot. He can see where Dean's brain is trying to take him. "He just needs my help. Once we find his family, or his…his girlfriend or wife or _whatever_, he can go back to his life and I can go back to mine. I'm just saying that…I have something to focus on besides the shop. I have a _person_ to focus on."

"Most people just go to singles bars," Dean points out.

"It _isn't like that_."

"Isn't like what?"

Sam only narrowly resists the urge to groan – he doesn't need this conversation with Dean in the first place, and he _definitely_ doesn't need Gabriel to include himself in it, because Gabriel does this _thing_ where he's all tiny and amnesia-afflicted and his eyes get fucking _huge_ and Sam has absolutely no defenses against that sort of thing. Like, at all. Jessica had used it against him all the time.

He realizes that this is the first time, in a long time, where he has thought about her without an accompanying stab of pain. It has only been two weeks, yes, but in those two weeks he has found himself thinking less about the things he has left behind, and more about what is still ahead of him. The shop, for one. And Becky needs someone to critique her novel. And…and _Gabriel_, of course. They need to find someone who knows who Gabriel _is_.

"It's nothing," Sam says; Dean snorts into his beer, and the look that Gabriel gives him, halfway between appraising and doubtful, tells Sam that this conversation isn't over – it has only been postponed.

~

Re: Novel!

From: Sam Winchester &lt;pietynorwit09@yahoo.com&gt; _View Contact_  
To: Becky Rosen &lt;morethanbrothers@gmail.com&gt;

Hey Becky, I know you're excited to meet Gabriel and you've been drawing all these parallels between your book and my life, and I get that this is a big thing for you…But, could you do me a favor and…not tell him about it? I mean, if you happen to drop by and he's there, or if you ever see him at the store with me, that sort of thing. I just think that he's been through enough without being told that his life is mirroring your story. That's a pretty big thing to drop on someone, and I think he just needs time to rest.

Sorry I haven't been calling every day. Things are kind of crazy. My brother is back from the Middle East and it's this whole big thing, you know how family is. I'll try and call you as soon as I can.

\- Sam

~

"Can't believe Sam is making us get a hotel," Dean gripes. He's aware that he's complaining. He's also aware that, ostensibly, he sounds like a jealous little kid, like someone's gone and taken his favorite toy. And it isn't like he _wants_ to sound like a brat, except…except…

Except it's been years, since he last saw Sam. And Sam is trying to make room for him, he really obviously is (they're getting lunch again tomorrow, and Sam has offered to show him around the city, little things like that), but there's always a part of him that's preoccupied with this new guy. _Gabriel_. Dean had noticed it in the airport, but he hadn't known the cause of it.

Well, now he does. And it sucks.

"It is good that your brother is expanding his social network," Cas says. He drops his duffle at the foot of his bed, and then pokes around the room, opening drawers and turning the television on and then off again. He takes the Gideon Bible from the nightstand and flips through it idly. Dean feels comfortable letting him do this – after all, if it hadn't been Castiel, it would have been him making the first move. Old habits die hard. "He is…different."

"Sammy's always been different," Dean snorts.

"I mean, he is not at all similar to us."

Dean unzips his own duffle, pulls out a pair of jeans that he hasn't worn for approximately eight months. They don't _smell_ like mold. Still, better to wash them, first. He can hear Sam now - _'You're finally turning into a responsible adult, Dean.'_ He shrugs, and then tosses the jeans over the edge of his bed.

"I see what you're getting at," he says, just in case Castiel feels the need to try and explain further. "We only really need people for a little while. For as long as an assignment takes, for instance. And then we can go back to how things were before. But Sam needs, like, closeness or some bullshit like that."

"Personal connections are important," Castiel says softly. "I have been…considering the merits of forming some of my own."

Dean straightens, cracking his back with a soft grunt, and then tosses himself onto his bed, next to the thirty pounds of shit he's been hauling around on his back. Castiel's is a little lighter, but not by much. "You aren't reenlisting?"

"I am thirty-six, Dean," Cas points out, gently, like Dean somehow didn't already know. "Before this, I volunteered as a firefighter. And before that, I was an accountant. I have gone through both a marriage and a partnership. Put simply, I have done many, many things in a very short time, and I believe that I am ready, now, for rest."

Dean shrugs. His concept of 'rest' is short-lived at best: a brief respite from assignments, a few hours spent laughing with the Privates in the mess tent. Finding wherever Castiel had bunked down and just…talking with him, for hours on end. 'Rest,' for Dean, doesn't mean dropping everything and putting down roots – it just means a _break_.

"Yeah, well," he says. "I'm thirty-one, who gives a shit. As long as there's a reason to fight, I'll still be fighting. It's…" He tries to think of a better way to say 'it's all I've ever known,' but Cas is giving him that sad look that he gets, sometimes, like he already knows. Dean hunches his shoulders against it.

He thinks he should feel uncomfortable, staying in a room with a guy who readily admits to having a 'partnership' (even if they _aren't_ on base anymore), but all Dean can think about is how out of place Cas had seemed, in Fallujah, with his huge blue eyes and his pale skin, and how Dean had accompanied him like a guard dog, how he'd taken a _bullet_ for the guy; in the face of shit like that, who Cas chooses to sleep with seems pretty fucking inconsequential.

And it isn't like Cas is still seeing anyone.

"Perhaps it is time that you should give the idea some consideration," Cas says. "Your brother is settling, and he is younger than you. Why should you not be given the same opportunity?"

"I dunno, because I don't need it? And Sam isn't _settling down_, he's…he's pretending he isn't still hurting by focusing on this Gabriel dude. It's not healthy."

"You would rather he be alone?"

_I would rather him spend time with me,_ Dean thinks bitterly. He misses his baby brother. Except…except at some point, Sam had stopped being his baby brother, and had started being a person in his own right. And Dean was never there to see it, so witnessing it now, firsthand, _hurts_.

He knows that Castiel is standing right behind him, but even so, Dean is still slightly surprised when a warm, callused hand falls upon his shoulder. He twitches with the desire to reach for a gun that isn't there, and then Castiel squeezes, and the urge passes over him like water.

"You are jealous," he says in his soft, stupidly rough voice.

"Fuck you," Dean snarls back, and he knows, even without seeing it, that Castiel is smiling. "Seriously. _Seriously_. Just…don't even go there, man."

"It is understandable. He is all that is left to you."

Dean turns, breaking Castiel's grip. Swallows when those intense blue eyes focus on him, on his face.

"We're best friends, right? So I have you, don't I?" And he feels gratified by Castiel's slow, disbelieving "_Oh_."

And then, "Yes, I suppose you do."

Castiel lets his hand fall back to his side, and Dean explodes into nervous action, gathering up clothes that need to be washed and shoving them back into his duffle.

"C'mon," he says. "Let's find a laundromat. I'm kinda worried some of these clothes are about to get up and walk away."

Castiel drifts after him, silent. But it's a happy silence, so Dean doesn't worry too much about it.

~

Sam's cell phone is easy to avoid. His ringtone is loud, and obnoxious, probably because Sam gets so _into_ things that there are times when he forgets everything around him…just sort of tunes things out. So it's loud on purpose, just in case Sam forgets that he still has _some_ connections to the outside world.

But Sam is at the bookstore (he has to make a living _somehow_, and being a stay-at-home babysitter for Gabriel isn't exactly bringing home the bacon), so there isn't a cell phone to avoid. There's just the home phone, sitting on the counter in the kitchen, ring-ring-ringing away. Gabriel scowls at it but then he realizes that it's just going to keep ringing until someone _answers_ it (because it's been ringing for at least a minute, and every time it goes to message the person hangs up and then _calls again_). He sidles into the kitchen, itching irritably at his stitches (he has to physically restrain himself from picking at them, most days). The phone continues to ring.

"Fuck you," he says to the phone, because it feels good, and because no one is around to reprimand him. He's been…he's been trying to keep himself a little _tamer_, around Sam. Every time he feels the urge to make an off-color joke or some kind of sexual innuendo, he thinks about how Sam looks when he gets home from work, all fresh-faced and clean and rocking the whole 'hipster sweater-vest' look, except Sam never looks like a douchebag. He only ever looks…sort of sad. A little distant, a little innocent, maybe. And Gabriel knows that he was engaged, knows the bare bones of what happened (hard not to, when the grief of it has stained Sam so thoroughly), and he's really, really hesitant to…to disturb that sadness, maybe. He's worried that, if he tries to lighten Sam up _his_ way, he'll end up breaking something, and things won't be the same.

The phone starts ringing again. Gabriel snarls at it, and then picks it up out of its cradle and debates just setting it down somewhere, letting the person talk to thin air.

"_Sam? Sam, is that you? I've been trying to call you on your cell and you weren't answering, and you haven't been answering anything, and I was really worried, Sam! I know you said your brother was coming back and you and him are sort of…_"

Gabriel sighs, cradles the phone against his ear. "This isn't Sam. Sam's at work. Like regular people. Can I…tell him who called?"

The voice – it's definitely a girl's voice – falls silent for so long that Gabriel thinks that maybe she just hung up.

Except nothing's ever that easy.

"_Oh my god! Oh my god, is this…is this Gabriel? The guy Sam helped? You're Gabriel, aren't you! Because you don't sound like Sam's brother and I can't think of anyone else who'd be in Sam's apartment and oh my god, you're seriously him!_"

Gabriel shifts the phone to his shoulder and wonders when he fell into some alternate Twilight Zone dimension, where getting mugged and developing amnesia automatically grants you celebrity status. But as far as he knows, the sky is still blue and the grass is still green, and he's pretty sure Obama is still the new President. So maybe it isn't a different dimension. Maybe this girl is just _batshit insane_.

"Um," he says. "Yeah. This is Gabriel. Look, miss, I don't…"

"_I'm Becky! I've heard a lot about you! Well, okay, not a lot, but Sam's mentioned you and he's been trying to be all secretive about it because he's worried I'll tell you about my book! But that's stupid, because I'm pretty sure you won't feel threatened by a romance novel or anything._"

Gabriel's brain has to shut down for a few moments in order to process that. It was something about romance novels and Sam's friend Becky and not telling him…things. Not telling him about the romance novel? Gabriel doesn't have any particular affinity for them, but he can't imagine a situation where he'd be actively _avoiding_ one.

"I'm not sure what you mean," he says, because that seems like a pretty safe, non-threatening way to say 'I think you're insane, please don't eat my face.'

"_Of course you don't,_" Becky responds. "_I haven't told you yet. And I don't care if Sam will get angry, you have the right to know these sorts of things!_"

Which is how Gabriel ends up seated at the kitchen table for an hour and a half, listening to Becky Rosen describe, in great detail, how his life has become the plot to her romance novel. Or how the novel has become the plot to his life. He's not sure the order really matters – the point is, Becky is writing something that is so closely mirroring his and Sam's lives that it's almost uncanny. It's _weird_.

Gabriel finds that he likes weird.

"Okay," he says, once the grand explanation is over. "Okay, I think I get it. In your story, the fallen angel is me. This Jared dude is Sam, and he's bisexual and has the hots for the angel. And then his best friend is this Jensen guy, and that's…"

"_That's Dean, I think. Sam's brother._"

"Yeah, we've met. And it's all about how these two fall in love and have this epic romance and some wacky, sitcom adventures along the way. Because the one guy is an angel."

"_He doesn't really understand how to be human, so he does some things that are odd, but I wouldn't call it a sitcom…_"

"No, no, I get it, I really do. But what I really want to know is…are you taking requests?"

There's silence on the other end of the line. Gabriel examines the kitchen table. It needs to be cleaned.

And then…

"_I'm listening,_" Becky says, and Gabriel only narrowly manages not to rub his hands together in fiendish glee.

He's been trying to think of a way to cheer Sam up, for everything that he's done, for everything he's sacrificed in order to put Gabriel up, to make him comfortable. And if bawdy jokes won't do it, and _flirting_ won't do it (he thinks the specter of Sam's fiancée is still hovering too close for him to try), then maybe this will.

He thinks he's just found his inspiration.

~

Every year, Wachovia Center is host to a plethora of events that draw in sightseers and tourists from miles around. It's a sports stadium, so of course it's the home to the Philadelphia Flyers, the 76ers, the Wings, and Sam mostly knows about these because he has occasionally been asked for directions to the Center itself, and every single time the question had been prefaced by "We're going to see the Philly Flyers, can you tell us…?"

But sports aren't the only things that take place there. Concerts are commonplace, as are tours of reality shows (Sam knows that American Idol has been there at least once), and, occasionally, performance art pieces. It's the sort of place where, if it _can_ happen, and it will conceivably bring in truckloads of money, then it _will_ happen.

Which is why Wachovia Center is out to get Sam (despite his general approval of acting troupes performing Shakespeare while dressed like dinosaurs).

Because when Sam gets home from work, he's barely thinking of Gabriel. Well, this is a lie, sort of – he's _always_ thinking of Gabriel, or almost always, wondering if he's all right, if he's eating enough, if his head injury is still bothering him. But the point is, Sam gets home, and all he wants to do is curl up in his bed with a book and his oscillating desk fan because it's _miserable_ outside. It's been raining off and on all day, and the combination of that and the overall humidity has conspired to make Sam's skin feel like it's about to slough off his skeleton. Every breath feels labored. He thinks dreamily of ordering take-out instead of cooking (something Gabriel will appreciate, he's sure, because Sam likes salads and rice dishes and Gabriel is more like Dean, a burger and pie sort of guy), fumbling with his keys. He's pretty sure he has lost about five pounds in sweat alone, which is disgusting. So he has a shower to look forward to, as well.

Except when he finally manages to get the door open, Gabriel is standing there, looking terribly, terribly pleased with himself.

"What did you do," Sam says automatically, except at this point it would probably be better to ask 'how can I make sure it doesn't kill me or the neighbors,' because the expression Gabriel is wearing points towards the fact that Sam shouldn't care _how_ something happened, but rather how to _fix_ it.

And Sam still can't bring himself to feel angry. A little irritated, maybe, but Gabriel's just like that, and Sam can't do anything to change it, so why bother getting upset?

"Nothing," Gabriel says. There's a suspiciously long pause after he says it, and Sam waits, determined.

"…You left your credit card here," Gabriel amends, finally, and Sam raises an eyebrow. He has approximately two credit cards, because he usually prefers debit and he doesn't make enough money to support poor credit habits in the first place. It's entirely plausible that he left _both_ cards in the apartment, but it would mean that Gabriel had gone _looking_ for them.

"I was thinking," he continues.

"Don't strain yourself.

"_Ha ha_. I was thinking about…everything you've done for me. I know it's only been a few weeks, but you really didn't have to put me up like this…"

"What was I supposed to do, let you stay at the hospital?"

"_Shush_," Gabriel says. "You're interrupting my heartfelt speech. Where was I?"

"Telling me what happened to my Visa, I think."

Gabriel blinks, slow. Sam shrugs and drops his jacket (why the fuck did he even _wear_ a jacket today, Jesus Christ) over the back of the chair in the living room, then toes off his shoes and kicks them under the coffee table. Gabriel follows him from the living room all the way to his bedroom, where he stands in the doorway while Sam strips off his shirt and socks, leaving a trail of clothes from the bed to the bathroom.

Gabriel doesn't look away, which Sam thinks might be a little odd. But then, they've been living together for almost three weeks now, and Sam's pretty sure that body consciousness starts to fade right around now. So it's no big deal.

"My Visa," Sam prompts, and Gabriel shakes his head, like he's waking from a deep sleep.

"Yeah. Yeah, so, you've put up with me and my dirty jokes and my bad habits…"

"I lived with Dean for eighteen years, Gabriel, it's not like I've never seen a sock in a sink before."

"Still. The point is, I'm basically mooching off of you, and it's not like you're independently wealthy, so I thought…you should treat yourself more often. All you do is get up, go to work, and come home."

"I talk to you," Sam protests. He stares at himself in the bathroom mirror, all sweaty and tall, and his hair is all floppy because he needs to get it trimmed, and he's got a bug bite of some kind on his right shoulder. He tries to see what people like Becky see in him, people like _Jessica_, but all he sees is some freakishly tall dude with bad hair. He scowls at his reflection, then grabs a towel and wipes the sweat and humidity from his shoulders and chest.

Gabriel makes a strangled noise from the doorway, somewhere between 'squeaky dog toy' and 'hacking cough.' Sam frowns.

"You okay, man?"

"Yeah, no, I just…choked. A little."

And because Sam doesn't really have any shame, he says, "Yeah, I've done that before. Anyways. You think I don't get out enough, so you…? Please don't tell me you signed me up for speed dating. Or something equally as stupid."

Gabriel tilts his head. "What? No. Fuck speed dating, that's moronic. I bought tickets to the circus."

Sam emerges from the bathroom with his towel draped around his shoulders and a look on his face that he thinks probably counts as 'stupidly surprised.' Gabriel bought tickets to the _circus_. With the bears and the lions and the acrobats, _that_ kind of circus, because Sam knows that Wachovia Center is hosting the Ringling Bros and Barnum &amp; Bailey, so there's absolutely no other kind of 'circus' that Gabriel could be referring to.

He drops down onto the edge of his bed, letting out a breath.

"I've never been to the circus," he says slowly, and Gabriel smiles at him. It's one of those rare smiles, the kind he normally gets when he thinks Sam isn't looking. It's a smile that's completely devoid of smugness and smarm. It's just…Gabriel being happy.

Sam likes it more than he thinks he should.

"I kinda figured," Gabriel says, so soft that Sam is pretty sure he's feeling something like…regret, or remorse, or _something_. Like he's sad _for Sam_. And that's just…he doesn't think anyone has ever been sad for him, before. People have pitied him, of course, especially in the months after Jessica's death.

But Gabriel isn't the sort of person to pity _anyone_. So whatever he's feeling for Sam…it's genuine.

And maybe he shouldn't use the word 'feeling' quite so freely.

"So," Sam says. "We're going to the circus, huh? Lions and tigers and bears."

"Oh my." Gabriel smiles at him, and Sam feels something in his chest flip over, a tiny ball made of light.


	3. End

  
Becky stares at her laptop for a very, very long time.

The circus. Gabriel is taking Sam to the circus. Becky has never been to a circus before (she is much like Sam, in that respect – she does not go out for the sake of 'going out'). She doesn't know how she would write it, whether the images would…would come to her in a dream, maybe? But the others haven't. She's just…written them. Like they had been inside her head all along and she was only just now pulling them out.

The point is, she has never been to a circus, and it is one of those things that one must _experience_. She cannot write about the lions, the elephants doing tricks, the acrobats and the dancers and the rings of fire…it isn't like writing fiction, because this is something that's _real_, it's happening _right now_, and Becky isn't there to watch it and document it like a National Geographic special so she isn't entirely sure what to do.

She lays her fingers against the keyboard, humming softly.

_Circus_, she thinks to herself. _Circus. Lions and tigers and people in sequined leotards and…and…_

It isn't coming to her.

But Becky likes lions and tigers.

Where else can you find lions and tigers? And _elephants_?

She cautiously presses a few keys.

_"You've never been to a zoo before?" Jared asked, and when Rich shook his head he knew exactly what they were going to be doing tomorrow. "But you know what a zoo is, right?"_

"Of course I know what a zoo is. I've been watching this planet for thousands of years. I'm pretty willing to say there's fuck-all that I don't know."

Jared held up his hands in apology, but he was laughing, too. It was hard to take Rich seriously when he was still dripping wet from the shower, dressed in pants that were too big for him (Jared's) and a shirt that hung off his thin shoulders like a cape (Jensen's). Rich still hadn't quite gotten the hang of Jared's rickety old shower – the hot water never worked when you wanted it to, and the cold water was lukewarm half the time anyways, so it was a pretty lose-lose situation. Jared could still remember the first time he'd shown Rich the bathroom, how the angel (and that was still a wild thought, seriously) had known how everything worked in theory, but the first time he'd poured lotion into his palm he'd ended up playing with it for fifteen minutes.

And that wasn't even taking into consideration how Jared had needed to stand outside the bathroom, shouting instructions, the first time it became apparent that Rich might have been an angel, but he still needed to bathe.

"That settles it, then," Jared said. "We're going to the zoo tomorrow."

"That is a pointless endeavor. I've already seen every animal ever created. Including ones you probably don't even know existed."

"That might be true," Jared conceded, "but the zoo has a gift shop."

"Yes!" Becky shouts, and then covers her mouth with one hand, because that was probably sort of rude to her next-door neighbors and she doesn't want to get on their bad side. They play loud music and the one guy, Ash, seems nice enough, but he brings home women who look like supermodels and swear like sailors, so Becky is sort of understandably intimidated.

Her fingers find their proper positions again, and she keeps typing.

~

"So, the whole point of a circus is to con people out of their money with ludicrously overpriced snacks and toys," Sam says, and the vendor he's staring at glares at him. It's a good thing Sam wasn't planning on buying a hot dog for – he winces - _Jesus_, four dollars and ninety-nine cents.

"I guess so," Gabriel says around a mouthful of cotton candy. "It's not like I remember going to one before. This is basically a new experience for me, too."

Sam has so far managed to content himself with a small package of Raisinets and a can of Coke, but Gabriel has been flitting from storefront to storefront and vendor to vendor, examining and discarding and picking out things that should, by all rights, be making him ill, but apparently Gabriel has like, a nuclear reactor in his stomach or something, because he's got a banana split, a stick of cotton candy, a package of Cookie Dough, _and_ a small bag of Circus Peanuts (because, apparently, it isn't a circus without Circus Peanuts), and now he's eyeing the hot dog vendor with interest.

Sam notices that Gabriel has also managed to sculpt his banana split into the shape of a remarkably detailed dick, plus ice cream testicles. Sam isn't sure whether he wants to laugh or cry at that.

"You're insane," he tells him, and Gabriel smiles, all blue-sugared lips and bright amber eyes. The light catches in his hair, turns it from brown to a caramelized honey color, and Sam feels his breath catch in his throat.

"But you love me anyways," Gabriel says, and it takes Sam a long minute to snort, to brush off the statement as a joke.

Because it is a joke. It has to be.

"Ha ha," Sam says weakly, and Gabriel stares at him, longer than Sam is comfortable with. It makes his stomach flip over in ways that are entirely too reminiscent of the first time he saw Jessica walking across the quad.

_Bad idea,_ he tells himself. _Going there is a very, very bad idea. Just because having him in the house with you has let you sleep more than a few hours a night…And just because he's funny and he makes you laugh, and he never makes you feel awkward or unwanted or…or…_

Yeah, it's definitely a bad idea. Sam shuts down that train of thought, drags it kicking and yammering back into the place where he locks up his memories of Jessica's face, still and silent and covered in burns, cradled against the hospital pillow.

"So," Gabriel says as they walk to their seat. When Gabriel had bought the tickets, he obviously hadn't given much thought to their seats – they have a good view of the center ring, but it isn't spectacular – but the whole place is sort of fey and enchanting, so Sam doesn't mind.

He seems to be saying that a lot about Gabriel, lately.

"So, what?" Sam answers, and dumps a cluster of Raisinets into his palm. He picks them up, one by one, instead of eating them all at once.

"So, I've been thinking that you know just about everything about me –"

"How can I know everything about you when you don't know any of it yourself?"

" – Shut up. I was _thinking_ that you should tell me more about yourself."

Sam shrugs. "There's not a lot to tell. You already know I own my own bookshop, and I've told you about Becky…You've met my brother."

"Your brother and his friend," Gabriel muses. "They're quite a couple."

Sam snorts. "Don't say that to Dean. I mean, I do think that Castiel is interested in him, but I don't think Dean's ever even thought about guys that way. But, you never know, it could happen. Dean needs someone to keep him grounded, you know? He ends up doing stupid, self-sacrificing shit if no one keeps an eye on him. I think Castiel could be good for him."

"And what about you?"

"What about me?"

"People who are interested! In you. You got any?" Gabriel waves his banana split for emphasis. It's starting to drip, so Sam is a little worried he'll end up getting half-melted Neapolitan ice cream all over him, but Gabriel carefully angles his arm away, so the few drops that escape splatter against an unused seat beside them. Sam shrugs uncomfortably.

"I don't…no. Not really."

"Aw, come on, Sam," Gabriel wheedles. "You know I'm not gonna judge."

Sam lets out a breath, staring out over the center ring. The show won't start for another fifteen minutes or so – they're still setting up, wheeling giant balls across the stadium floor, horses trotting in circles, the corner dedicated to the animals, the tigers and the elephants and the donkeys, almost riotous with movement.

"Someone told you about Jessica," he guesses, and knows that he's right when Gabriel's expression sobers.

"I figured it out myself," Gabriel says. "Between watching you and listening to Becky."

"Oh God. I was wondering when you two would end up running into each other."

"Just over the phone. She's…excitable."

"That's one way of putting it." Sam dumps his uneaten Raisinets back into their bag, then settles his hands in his lap. He feels like a death row inmate getting ready to face the last, long walk to the electric chair. "All right. Jessica…she was my fiancée. And she…she died."

"I gathered that much. Look, Sam, if you don't feel like telling me this…"

"No!" Sam, says, and is surprised by the vehemence in his own voice. "No, it's…It's just that I've never really talked to anyone about it. And it's been three years, and people have told me to, that I need to discuss my pain if I want the healing to start, or some bullshit like that…"

"You loved her," Gabriel says. "And so you weren't ready to talk about it. Makes perfect sense to me."

"Thank you," Sam breathes, and means it. Means it so hard that his chest hurts. "But I think that talking about it is the only thing left that I _can_ do. I've done my grieving. Blamed everyone from myself to God. And now it's getting to the point where thinking about her doesn't hurt so much, and I think that means I'm ready."

"You sure it's me you want to be talking to? Not your brother? Hell, you've known Becky longer than me."

"You just…I don't know. You _get_ it, Gabriel. You…understand."

Sam feels Gabriel's hand nudge against his side, warm and gentle, the fingers curling briefly against his hip and then pulling away again. Maybe it's a touch that others would consider too intimate, but it's exactly what Sam needs to shore up his courage and plow ahead.

"I met Jessica at Stanford," he begins. "I must have been…Yeah. I was twenty. And I fell in love with her like _that_, you know? Like a…like I'd been hit by a meteor. It was _that_ fantastic. We were practically joined at the hip, and it was…good. Amazingly good. She was smart, and funny, and _beautiful_."

Gabriel is giving him a look that Sam can't - _refuses_ \- to recognize. "I proposed, after I graduated, after I'd saved up enough money, and she accepted. We got our own apartment, and Jess encouraged me to…to be more, to _do_ more. Ever since I was a kid I wanted to be a lawyer."

"I take it that didn't work out," Gabriel says, and Sam slowly shakes his head.

"No. It…I was at class. A night class. Jessica was at the apartment…She'd been helping me study for a test, all week. Like, pulling all-nighters with me, the whole nine yards. She was exhausted. They said…The fire department said that she must have turned the stove on to make tea, or soup. Something. And she must have fallen asleep."

The crowd around them shudders, the noise level rising. The show is going to start soon, and Sam takes a deep breath, pushes the words from somewhere in the center of his chest, like excising a tumor.

"They said it was faulty wiring in the smoke detector," he rushes. "That if it hadn't happened then, it would have happened later, and there was never a goddamn thing I could do about it. And she was sleeping, and she…I only got to see her once, in the hospital. Between the smoke damage and the burns…she died, that night. I barely had the chance to say goodbye."

The music swells. The overhead lights dim, and the audience is bathed in the stark whiteness of spotlights as they pinwheel around the tent, flashing over faces that Sam will never recognize…

And then over Gabriel. One brief, huge burst of light, burning bright, and Sam blinks, and the dark, dancing spots left behind almost make it look like Gabriel has wings.

"You never stopped grieving," Gabriel says softly. "That's a big part of moving on, you know."

And then he leans to the side (and Sam can smell him, sugar-sweet and ice cream and candy, and beneath that something woody and intensely _wild_), and Sam's eyes widen as Gabriel's lips fall against his, an awkward corner-catch that would make it easy, so easy, for Sam to turn away and pretend it never happened.

Except he doesn't. He sits there, frozen, as Gabriel breathes against his skin, and then leans back. He looks…sheepish. No. It's stronger than that.

He looks _ashamed_.

"I'm sorry," he says, and Sam thinks that that's just…it's wrong. Gabriel isn't the type to say he's sorry for _anything_, most especially things he means. "I didn't mean to…I can go. Catch a bus or something. Let me just…"

Sam grabs hold of him, wraps his fingers around Gabriel's wrist and keeps him there. He swallows against the lump in his throat.

"Stay," he says, and Gabriel slowly sinks back down into his seat as the Ringmaster takes his place beneath the glare of the main spotlight.

~

Becky wakes in the middle of the night. Or, she's pretty sure it's the middle of the night, because it's dark outside and she doesn't feel particularly rested, so she's assuming that it's probably sometime around midnight or possibly the early hours of the morning. But the point is, she's _awake_.

And she feels like writing.

Which is exciting, because she's never had a bolt of inspiration like this before! She's always been fairly clockwork about her writing schedule – she writes for at least two hours every day, usually after five, when she gets home from the game store, and the words don't pour out of her in a rush, not ever. It's like a slow, steady stream. She usually manages to get at least a thousand typed out every day.

But this doesn't feel like a stream. It doesn't even feel like a river.

This feels like an _ocean_ inside her. Like if she doesn't get to her computer and start typing _right now_ she'll explode, or possibly _implode_, and that would be an awful thing but she can't bring herself to think about it because it's also _glorious_. Glorious and huge and nearly incomprehensible.

Becky manages to put on her fuzzy writing socks and her most comfortable t-shirt before she starts feeling antsy, and has to run out into the living room in her underwear. Whatever, she lives alone, and it isn't like she hasn't done it before on occasion anyways. She sits herself down at her laptop, logging on and pulling open her latest chapter of her work in progress.

_No,_ she thinks. _This isn't what I want to write._ Or at least, not this _part_.

She opens a new Word file.

She needs to write the ending. She's written the beginning, and now she needs to write how it _ends_. How Rikbiel is called back to Heaven after a whole year on Earth, a whole year of slowly falling in love with Jared, and how he's thrilled because he gets his powers, his _wings_ back, but all Jared can think is that he's leaving…

_Rikbiel was leaving and he was never coming back._

"You can't go," Jared whispered. "You just can't. What about…Fuck, Rich, what about me?! Was that Heaven's plan all along? Some kind of…of sick experiment? Let's see what happens when we get a human to fall in love with an angel! Do you think he'll go crazy or just be miserable for the rest of his life!"

"You were never part of any plan," Rikbiel said softly. "It was always intended that I remain on Earth for a year, and a year only."

"You never told me."

"I never knew. My Father did not see fit to inform me. As was His right. I have done things, Jared…things I have never told you about. Things that I find myself ashamed of, now. This was never meant to be a reward, but a punishment. A way to curb my foolish pride."

Rikbiel's expression contorted into something that was almost like a grimace, so full of pain and heartache that Jared's chest hurt in sympathy. "Pride," he said quietly, "as you might know, is something that we must keep an eye on."

"That doesn't mean you have to go." Jared was pretty sure he was begging, that he had reduced himself to pleading with Rich not to leave him alone…He'd been so sure, before he met Rich, that he would always be the odd man out. Not like Misha and his wife, not like Jensen and his girlfriends, but…always doomed to failed relationships. Always alone.

And then he had found Rich, and he'd started to have hope.

And Heaven was taking it away from him.

"You will not remember me," Rikbiel was saying. "If it will help to ease the pain, I can make sure you don't remember me. This. Any of it."

Jared snorted. "You'll, what, just steal the past year from me? The whole year? And replace it with…with…God, I don't know, some bullshit about a…a potential acting job, and hanging out with Jensen, and all these things we did…There'll just be holes there, where you're supposed to be? It'll be hell, Rich. It'll be worse than hell, because I'll be miserable and confused and I won't even know why."

"I'm only trying to help," Rikbiel sighed.

"Then stay! Here. With me. We'll…we'll make it work. Somehow."

"I am being called back," Rikbiel said sadly. "It is not a draft to be avoided, nor a message to be ignored. I have no choice in the matter."

And Rikbiel reached up, to touch his fingertips to Jared's cheek. Jared was pretty sure he was crying, because Rikbiel's fingers slipped against his skin, hot and wet.

"If I had a choice, I would remain with you for as long as you would have me," Rikbiel murmured, and leaned up to seal his mouth over Jared's, desperation and regret and a fierce, unending love. Rikbiel radiated these things like a hundred watt bulb, and Jared was the room he shone down upon, and it was too much, too fierce, and it was exactly what he wanted. To be loved and desired by this incomprehensible and endless being. This angel.

"Please," Jared murmured against Rikbiel's mouth. "Please, Rich. Rikbiel."

And then, just like that, he was alone.

Becky stares at what she's written.

That was…wow. A _lot_ more angst and whumpage than she had been intending to write.

_This is heartbreaking,_ she thinks. _It's a good thing this can't really be…mirrored, or whatever is happening. It's not like Gabriel is gonna turn into an angel and get called back to Heaven._

Becky bites her bottom lip.

She can't shake the feeling that something is going to happen. That something _has_ happened, and now the consequences of it are looming just over the horizon, waiting to crash down and smother everyone.

She decides it's probably a good idea for her to go back to sleep.

~

"There's no need to explain," Gabriel is saying. "Heat of the moment. You've done a lot for me, you can explain it away as…I don't know, crossed wires. I wanted to make you happy, I got confused, end of story. I have head trauma, I can use that excuse."

"I don't think the effects of head trauma last quite that long," Sam murmurs, and Gabriel closes his mouth, lips pursed.

At least this - actually _talking_ \- is better than what they were doing before, which had been sitting on the couch and staring at each other for a half-hour.

It's been two days since the circus, since Gabriel kissed him, and the tension between them has finally come to a head. Granted, it was largely because Sam had grabbed Gabriel by the arm and then told him "So, explain what happened," but still.

And Gabriel had swallowed, and Sam had followed the movement of his throat of his eyes, and they had ended up on the couch, a safe foot of distance between their bodies.

Because Sam is confused. Really, _really_ confused, and a little…a little exhilarated. A little frightened. It's been three years. Three years since Jessica, three years since he moved halfway across the country, three years since he has touched or been touched in anything other than camaraderie.

_What should I do,_ his brain gibbers, useless and panicked. _What should I do, it's been three years but I promised Jessica, I promised her, and Gabriel is smart and funny and sometimes he's a dick but everyone has their faults, and I promised._

He keeps chasing the logic of 'Jessica would want me to move on,' but he ends up running in circles. Jessica would want him to move on, but when he had proposed he had promised her _forever_.

_No,_ some small part of him speaks up, _You promised 'until death do us part.'_

"Look," Gabriel says, after a moment of silence that is too long for comfort. "You're obviously not going to drop this, like a _sane_ person would, so I'll be straight with you. I have post-traumatic retrograde amnesia, and there is absolutely no guarantee that I will ever find out who I was before this. So far, there haven't exactly been dozens of my family members beating down your door, which makes me think that I either have no family, or I was an even bigger dick before than I am now. There's a metric _ton_ of shit I don't know, but I _do_ know that I think you're attractive. And it doesn't make me feel like freaking out or anything, so don't even go there."

Sam closes his mouth, and Gabriel continues.

"You're attractive," he repeats. "God help me, you're _sweet_. You put everyone else miles ahead of you, and you've probably got some sort of martyr complex beyond that, not to mention you come with the added baggage of losing someone you loved. And I _still_ want you, despite all of that. It's not just physical attraction, either."

Gabriel takes a moment to eye him, from head to feet, and Sam feels his cheeks heat. "Although that helps. A lot. It's…there's something _about_ you. That even though you've been through all this shit, you still haven't given up. You're a little worn around the edges, and don't even _try_ to deny it, but you're still…here. I don't think you ever looked at me and questioned what you were doing. You know how rare it is for an asshole like me to end up with a white hat like you? Even just as friends? Frankly, I'm surprised you haven't decided to kick me out on my ass yet."

"You're not an asshole, Gabriel," Sam protests. "You're just…you're _you_. I don't mind you being yourself. I'd prefer it if you didn't insult my brother…"

"See, that's what I'm talking about! You just…_understand_. You hardly ever get angry, and even when you do, it's just…disappointment, not real anger. You're one of those rare people with an actual, working conscience, and somehow, you found _me_. Out of everyone who could have walked by that alley and called nine-one-one for me, it was you. You have no idea how freaking lucky I am, Sam. No idea at all."

Sam isn't ready for this. For this…outpouring of _truth_. Because Gabriel isn't getting emotional about it – there are no dramatic tears in his eyes, no hands clasped in his lap…nothing. Just bare sincerity, and he obviously isn't _expecting_ anything from it. He isn't expecting a declaration of undying love; he isn't even expecting a one-night stand. In fact, if anything, he looks like he's expecting a punch in the mouth. His expression is guarded, wary, the line of his shoulders tense. Sam is struck, all over again, by how emotive Gabriel's face is. How brilliant the color of his eyes.

He tells himself that Jessica would be proud of him, and it helps to ease the guilt, when Sam leans forward and kisses Gabriel.

It isn't hesitant, the way it was before, when Sam had been half sure that Gabriel had made a mistake, that he was joking or perhaps he had leaned forward to tell Sam something and he had simply _missed_. In fact, it's quite possibly the most purposeful thing Sam has done since he dropped out of graduate school, and when Gabriel immediately shoves back into the kiss, slants his mouth more firmly against Sam's and parts his lips, all thoughts of the past, of _Jessica_, vanish. It's just him and Gabriel, sitting on a couch, making out like they're teenagers again. The wet push and slide of their lips, and Sam's so much taller that he has to sort of hunch down in order to get the proper angle, but it's all right, because the next minute Gabriel mutters "_Fuck_" against his mouth and then climbs into his lap.

Which solves one problem pretty neatly, but draws attention to another: Gabriel settles his hands against Sam's shoulders, frames Sam as best he can with his body, his legs splayed apart, knees on either side of Sam's lap. Which means that they aren't just kissing, they're _grinding_ \- Sam can feel the hot press of Gabriel's dick against his thigh, even through pants that are two sizes too large.

And that's just…that's _crazy_. Because Sam experimented with his sexuality for maybe, like, a _week_ back before he met Jessica. One week out of his two years of being single, and it had mostly involved making out and one spectacularly enthusiastic (though not terribly skilled) bout of fucking with a guy named Andy. Good times, but not exactly life changing, even if it _did_ give Sam a newfound appreciation for his prostate.

So what is it about Gabriel that makes his cock ache and his heart swell up like a balloon?

"Hold on," Sam says, and Gabriel mumbles against his skin, sucks Sam's bottom lip into his mouth, and Sam loses track of things for a few moments. He comes to when Gabriel pulls his collar aside in order to seal his lips over Sam's pulse point. "Wait…Wait, Gabriel, we should…we should slow down."

"Don't want to," Gabriel sighs, but he doesn't move any further than he already has, and the slow, steady grinding motion of his hips stutters to a halt. Sam's eyes nearly roll back up into his head, because _Jesus Christ_, that's good, really good, and what the hell is he even _doing_? It had seemed like a good idea at the time, like maybe…maybe Jessica would approve of him moving on, finding something with someone else (even a _male_ someone else), but now all he can feel is arousal and the vague sense that something is _wrong_.

_It isn't you,_ his brain offers, _it's him._

Oh. _Oh_.

"We have to talk," Sam says firmly, and settles his hands on Gabriel's hips, not to pull him closer, but to gently push him away. Gabriel slides back until he's no longer perched in Sam's lap; his scowl could level cities, Sam thinks.

"We've been doing nothing _but_ talking," Gabriel says. "I've already told you how I feel about this. I don't know if this is something that will work out long term, but…"

"Gabriel, what if you're married? What if you have someone already?"

Gabriel opens his mouth. Closes it.

"I don't," he says, and then swallows. "I wasn't wearing a ring. And…and don't you get like, tan lines? So you can just look and…tell, when someone's…"

Sam hunches his shoulders. Oh God. This is all kinds of messed up. Not only does he have to deal with his own emotional baggage, but he also has to contend with the possibility that Gabriel might not even be his to pursue. "You were mugged, Gabriel. I think they'd have taken any rings you were wearing. And…and maybe you haven't been married for all that long. Maybe only a few weeks, or maybe you just have a girlfriend…"

'Stop," Gabriel chokes out. "Just…stop talking about it like it's true. You don't know. _I_ don't know."

"That's the whole point," Sam sighs. "We don't know. And I'm not going to be…Jesus. I'm not going to be an accessory to adultery. 'We didn't know' isn't going to be a good enough excuse."

"So, what, just…ignore this? I'm not going to just go back to how things were before. I'm not the kind of asshole who'll cheat on someone, but I _am_ the kind who won't feel an ounce of regret over thinking about you when I jerk off."

And fuck him, but it's _just_ like Gabriel to say something like that, and it sends a jolt of _wanting_ straight down Sam's spine. He presses his fingertips to his right temple, groaning softly.

"No," he agrees. "No, but we can't go any further than this. I _mean_ it. Maybe you can shrug off the consequences until they're staring you in the face, but I can't, Gabriel. I'm not that kind of person."

He can see the moment that Gabriel realizes that asking Sam to change his mind won't work, sort of like seeing a wall crumbling in slow motion. Gabriel opens and closes his mouth a few times, and then sighs, and leans forward to rest his head against the center of Sam's chest, just…breathing there. Just for a minute. And Sam isn't cruel, or heartless, or any of those things, and so he lets him.

Because Sam's pretty sure he needs the closeness just as much as Gabriel does.

He presses his nose to the crown of Gabriel's head, inhaling deeply. "We'll give it a few months," he says softly. "And if you still don't remember…if no one shows up…"

"Does it make me a bad person," Gabriel says slowly, "that I hope that's the case?"

And Sam doesn't have an answer for that, because he's thinking the same thing.

~

"_Hello, this is the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, calling for Samuel Winchester. The Philadelphia police department has turned up a missing persons report with a description that matches the man in your care. We've called the man's significant other and she's driving down from New York today in order to make a positive or negative ID. You'll need to bring Gabriel to Headquarters at 235 North 11th Street tomorrow, the fifteenth, at three p.m. Thank you, and have a nice day._"

Message deleted.

~

Inbox: 6 messages

From: Becky Rosen &lt;morethanbrothers@gmail.com&gt; _View Contact_  
To: Sam Winchester &lt;pietynorwit09@yahoo.com&gt;

Sam? You haven't been answering any of my calls and I've already sent like five emails. PLEASE let me know what's going on! Are you alright? Is GABRIEL alright?

I'm worried. :(

Please call me.

\- Becky &lt;3

~

Dean presses the 'end call' button, then all but throws his cell phone across the room, uncaring as to where it lands, or whether or not it will be in one piece when he goes to try and find it later. Castiel watches him from the other bed, endlessly patient, endlessly _understanding_.

"He won't talk about it," Dean says stiffly, after a long moment of silence. "He just goes to work and then comes back and locks himself in his apartment, and he won't _talk to me_."

Castiel tilts his head. "Has he given an explanation?"

"Sort of. Gabriel's gone. Police turned up some missing persons report from New York, for some dude named Gabriel Pazzo, and then a chick named Ruby drove down and said that Gabriel was her boyfriend. And then they left."

"He did not say goodbye?"

"I'm sure he did, but I don't think it matters. Sam was…I think Sam was really serious about…whatever he and Gabriel were thinking about doing. And it's been years, Cas. _Years_ since I saw Sam that happy. Even when we weren't talking, I knew he was happy with Jessica, and that made things easier…Jesus. It's like after the funeral all over again."

He knows he's being insensitive, but, frankly, he doesn't care. Because this is his _brother_ he's talking about, his brother who's gone through so much shit that it's beginning to seem like the universe has him on some sort of cosmic hit list. First mom, and then dad, and Jessica. Now Gabriel.

"Sam said that they were planning on waiting, before…all this," he says quietly. "Waiting until they were absolutely sure that Gabriel wasn't gonna be going anywhere. Now I'm thinking that was a mistake."

"You would encourage your brother to commit adultery?"

Dean stares. "What? Jesus, no, Cas. And it's not like Gabriel was _married_, but…" He buries his face in his hands, and Castiel hesitantly stands from his bed, crosses the room in order to sit beside Dean. He can feel a warm, broad palm settle between his shoulder blades, a comforting weight.

"I just want him to be happy," Dean says.

"I know," Cas answers. "But I believe things will work out for the best."

~

_"I think that things always work out for the best," Misha said. Jensen nodded agreement, although that might also have been him falling asleep on Jared's couch. Again._

"But he isn't coming back," Jared hiccupped. The bottle of Cuervo in his hand was half-empty and getting emptier by the minute. Jared took another swig, just to help it along.

"Alcohol isn't going to dull the pain," Misha said sagely. "Facing your troubles will. I know a really good spiritual advisor, if you're interested."

"No, Misha, I don't want to be spiritually advised."

"I'm just saying, he's really good. In the meantime, why don't you pray about it?"

Jared blinked. His brain was a bit muzzy, but he could have sworn Misha had just told him to pray. "Um. What?"

"Well, you know. This guy kept saying he was an angel, and I believe in the unknown, even if Jensen here doesn't." Jensen snorted unattractively into the arm of the couch. "So, pray. And maybe he'll hear you. Or God will. Isn't that the point of praying? Asking for things you aren't sure you'll get?"

Jared stared down at his hands, at the bottle, glinting gold in the dim light of his apartment. He hadn't cleaned in almost two weeks. He could barely remember to shave in the morning. It was getting to the point where he was inching past 'mourning' and beginning to intrude into 'pathetic' territory.

Praying. What harm could it do?

Becky gives her fingers a rest, cracking the knuckles and then sitting, staring at what she's written. Almost a hundred-thousand words of Jared and Rikbiel getting to know each other, learning their differences, their likes and dislikes. Growing to _love_ each other. And this is where her inspiration runs out – she can't think of where to go beyond this: Jared sitting in his darkened living room with his two best friends, drunk and miserable and dangerously close to depression.

Because Becky doesn't think that praying solves anything. If you want something done, you go out and do it yourself – you don't sit in the dark and whine about how God isn't doing it for you. She thinks that God appreciates self-sufficiency more than he appreciates poorly articulated demands for satisfaction.

Even so, she glances up at the ceiling, wondering if it will do any good.

_Dear God,_ she thinks, _Please let the ending come to me. Please don't let it hang here with everybody sad and with no hope. Please let me think of a way to make this work. And…and please. Please let Sam be happy. He deserves it. If Sam is praying for anything…if you can take his prayer over mine, please do it._

Even if it means her novel will forever remain depressing and without an ending, she thinks she'd rather see a real life love story than anything she's written down in the past few weeks.

_Thank you. Oh, and amen,_ she adds, because she thinks that's the proper prayer etiquette. It's been a long time since she last went to Church.

Becky turns off her lamp, and then stands, and begins to get ready for bed.

~

"_Sam, it's almost been a month. I know you're really torn up about this, but you need to get out of your apartment, talk to people. Please, Sam. You got through Dad's death, you got through Jessica, you can get through this, too. Look, me and Cas are shelling out for an apartment…it's pretty close to yours. If I don't hear from you in twenty-four hours, I'm damn well coming over there and making you talk to me, understand? Please, Sammy. I'm worried._"

Message deleted.

~

Sam is starting to earn the pity of his customers.

He isn't depressed (he _isn't_), but work is the only thing that gets him up in the morning, now. Which is stupid; he shouldn't miss the sound of Gabriel's laughter, him singing, off-key and horrible, in the shower. He shouldn't miss bumping into Gabriel on his way to the kitchen for his morning coffee. He definitely shouldn't miss the sight of Gabriel snoring on his couch, but there you go. Sam even has trouble sleeping, now, without that distant sound to reassure him that he's no longer alone in his apartment.

But it's getting to the point where some of his regular customers, the ones who have been visiting since he opened the store, are beginning to express concern. Mrs. Handel had made a comment about him needing to get more sleep (Sam lies down at night, and closes his eyes, but he wakes up feeling less refreshed than when he went to bed). Mr. Girard's daughter had told him, without reservation, that he needed to shave (she's only ten, but Sam can still see where he's been negligent, the dark patches of stubble on his jaw).

It's stupid and it shouldn't be affecting him this much, but it _is_.

The phone rings, for what has to be the tenth time today. Sam checks the caller ID and, sure enough, it's Dean. Dean, who keeps making threats to come over and pull Sam's head forcibly out of his ass, but who has yet to follow through.

Becky has come over, though, braving her fear of long bus rides in order to visit his apartment. It's a big step for her, and she'd been a shaking wreck when he'd let her in, and Sam had felt so bad about it that he'd made her stay the night. She hadn't written _anything_, not even in one of her ever-present notepads. Which is…worrying.

Sam pulls open the fridge, scanning the shelves. There's no milk, deli meat, or bread. He has three eggs, a jar of pickles, two and a half tomatoes, and an orange.

He takes the orange out. Making hard-boiled eggs seems like too much work, and he's already spent most of the day reorganizing shelves of mystery novels. He'd barely had enough energy to get to his room and change into a t-shirt and boxers when he'd come home.

Besides, he isn't terribly hungry.

He halfheartedly peels his orange, and then carries it out to the living room. The couch still smells faintly like Gabriel – or maybe he's just imagining it.

_Jesus Christ,_ he thinks. _Dean was right all along. I really am a fourteen year-old girl._

He breaks off a segment of orange and viciously bites into it, imagining it's Ruby's face.

Ruby. _Gabriel's girlfriend_. Who'd shown up out of nowhere and carted off the only person Sam's gotten really close to in _three years_. And he knows he should feel…happy. Gabriel had looked at her and recognition had flooded his expression, enough to let Sam know that he was _remembering_, at least partially, who he was. Who he'd been before. And Ruby had seemed…nice enough. Short (shorter than Gabriel, even), brunette, a little bit catty. Like she could give as good as she got. Probably Gabriel's _type_.

She had kissed Gabriel. _Kissed_ him. Right in front of Sam. And Gabriel had looked guilty as all hell, hadn't looked terribly pleased about it, but he hadn't stopped her, and then he had gone with her.

Because he remembered. And because he had a whole other life in New York that didn't involve Sam, or bookstores, or epic gay romance novels. Obviously.

Sam spits a seed out into the palm of his hand, then sighs and gets up in order to dispose of it. He throws it in the trash, wraps the uneaten half of his orange in a plastic baggy, and then puts it in the fridge. Jesus, he thinks he's probably lost like, three pounds doing this. His hips were bony enough _before_. This can't be healthy.

He is aware, on some distant level, that he is mourning Gabriel in much the same way that he mourned Jessica. Which is stupid, because Jessica was going to be his _wife_, and Gabriel is just some dude he found in the street and happened to fall in…

_The heart wants what it wants,_ Sam thinks, more hysterical than philosophical.

There's a knock at the door. Sam closes the fridge, wipes his hands off on a dishrag, and then mentally prepares himself for some hardcore yelling from Dean. He's pretty sure Becky isn't about to make the journey to his doorstep again any time soon.

Fingers still slightly sticky from orange juice, Sam doesn't even bother to glance through the peephole, just unhooks the latch and then yanks the door open harder than strictly necessary. Because he's pissed, his pissed at his situation (because he can't do anything about it, because he _got himself into it_), he's pissed at Gabriel for leaving and at Ruby for taking him away, and he's pissed at _Dean_ because his brother can't take a hint and leave well enough alone.

"I _told_ you that I don't want to talk!"

Except Dean isn't there.

"Hey, Sam," Gabriel says.

He's wearing a suit, Sam notes. A suit, and a _tie_. And his hair is neatly slicked back, trimmed, and he's wearing shoes with pointed toes that look kind of uncomfortable, and _cufflinks_. He's wearing fucking _cufflinks_. Sam is pretty sure he doesn't even own a pair of cufflinks, and he doesn't think he would know what to do with them even if he did.

But they look good on Gabriel. Little winking pieces of gold.

And here's Sam, standing in his boxers and a shirt that has Captain America on it (he's had it since he was sixteen, give him a break) and far too many holes to still be considered publicly decent, and his face is still sticky with orange juice, and he's wearing socks that don't match because he can't be fucked to do his laundry properly anymore. He hasn't shaved since like, yesterday morning, and he's pretty sure he looks like a raccoon, what with the dark circles under his eyes.

Gabriel is still looking at him. Probably being quietly judgmental and happy with his hot girlfriend and he's come back to tell Sam 'thanks for the couch makeouts' and then he'll flit back off to New York and do whatever it is that men in suits do these days. Maybe he's a lawyer. Sam has no idea. He doesn't care.

Sam shuts the door.

"Aw, _c'mon_, Sam!" Gabriel makes a pathetic noise from behind about two inches of wood. "Please let me in? There are things I want to tell you."

"Go away," Sam says, and leans against the door, shoving his face into his hands and forcing himself to breathe quietly. In, and out. In. Out. Gabriel is here. Gabriel is here in a tie and a suit. Gabriel is here _without Ruby_. Sam isn't going to…there's no point in getting his hopes up because there's _no hope_. Gabriel is apparently successful enough to warrant gold cufflinks or tiepins or whatever else it is he's wearing, and he's got a hot girlfriend (there's still a fierce, angry part of Sam that is viciously pleased with the fact that they're aren't married), so the only conceivable reason for why he's here is…

Maybe he's going to try and give Sam money. Oh God, that would be embarrassing.

Sam is sort of surprised by how much he hates the idea of Gabriel coming back just to say _thanks_, and then to shuffle his feet and just…leave again. He hates it so much that he's beginning to dislike the Gabriel in his head, just on principle.

Which is stupid, because there's still a chance that the Gabriel he's imagining isn't the same as the one on the other side of that door.

_No, there isn't,_ his brain insists. And then, _But you're acting like a jealous little bitch either way so you might as well find out._

He pushes away from the door and pulls it open again.

Gabriel is still standing there, immaculate in his suit.

And Sam tries, desperately, to scrounge up any emotion that is even _vaguely_ similar to hate, but he can't. Because Gabriel isn't sneering at him or holding out a handful of cash, and he doesn't have Ruby hanging off his shoulder. He's just…there. Looking faintly sheepish and maybe a little nauseous.

"I broke up with Ruby," Gabriel says.

Sam makes a noise that he thinks probably contains more than just a tinge of disbelief.

"I just couldn't stay there," he continues. "She kept telling me all these things that I knew were true, but then I would think about it and it'd be…'no, I like the Sam version better.' She kept telling me that my tattoo matches the one that she has that's like, fuckin' devil wings, and all I could think about was Becky's stupid goddamn _story_. And…and she _nagged_, Sam, she kept telling me I could be better or thinner or _more sophisticated_. I ate a donut and she just about had a fit, and I remembered how often I mainlined sugar in front of you and you never said a word, you never _judged_, and you never told me to 'be nice' to people or to hold my tongue, and…"

Gabriel pauses, swallows, and Sam follows the bob of his Adam's apple with his eyes.

"I kept thinking 'this isn't home,'" Gabriel finishes thickly.

_This can't be real,_ Sam thinks. _There's no way that this is real. I'm asleep, I have to be. This is an awful, awful dream and I'll wake up and it'll be over, and I'll be depressed for the rest of the day. Fuck my subconscious, seriously._

So he does what he thinks anyone would do, if they were allowed to follow dream-logic: he grabs Gabriel by the lapels of his suit with juice-sticky fingers, yanks him into the uncleaned-since-last-Tuesday apartment, and then shoves him up against the wall and kisses him, wet and open and aching, Gabriel's mouth slackened with want and so, so warm.

This is the part where Sam should be waking up, uncomfortable and possibly sticky and fucking _angsting_.

But it doesn't happen. Gabriel remains solid and _there_ underneath his clenched hands.

Gabriel exhales, shaky and wrecked, against Sam's mouth.

"That was way more enthusiastic than I expected," he says.

So Sam kisses him again, just to make sure.

~

_"I heard you," Rikbiel murmured. "Across more time and space than you can even begin to comprehend, I heard you praying, and I wanted. Do you have any idea how strange that is? For an angel of the Lord to want? How strange it is for an angel to be given a gift of this magnitude?"_

"Probably about as strange as it is for a human to fall in love with an angel," Jared teased. He looped his arms around Rikbiel's neck, fingers trailing down to card through the soft down at the jut of his shoulder blades. Even as he touched it, the feathers, the arching bones and the thin, soft skin, were all disappearing. Melting away into thin air, until Jared's fingers were clutching nothing but smoke and memory.

"So what happens now, Rikbiel?" Jared asked, and Rikbiel smiled, soft, quick. The half-knowing smile that Jared had fallen in love with. The angel leaned forward, ghosting his lips over the curve of Jared's jaw, down the length of his neck.

"For starters," Rikbiel breathed, "you can go back to calling me Rich."

Becky lets out a sigh of relief. It isn't _the_ end. There are still things to wrap up, like Jensen and Misha's odd couple relationship, and how Rikbiel gets permission from God to return to Jared, and how Jared deals with making a lifetime commitment to an angel (because she sincerely believes that you don't just have a _casual relationship_ with a living piece of Biblical lore). And then she probably should expand on Jared's acting job, how he struggles to bring in enough money to support himself and occasionally Jensen…And there's a story behind Sandy, the ex-girlfriend, Becky is sure of it.

But for now, it's _an_ end. Jared and Rikbiel - _Rich_ \- are together again, and they'll have problems, the same as any other couple, but they'll get through them and be stronger for it. It's the best possible scenario she can imagine, as far as the actual story is concerned. All she can do now is add on to it. An epilogue, maybe? Something that explores their lives a year or two in the future. Yeah, an epilogue sounds like a good idea.

But for now, she's going to save her .doc file, close her laptop, and go to bed. And tomorrow, she's going to call Sam and invite him and Gabriel to go with her to the comic store.

Becky slips out of her sweatpants on her way to bed, but pauses by the window, overlooking the vast, glittering city, the bright neon, the headlights of passing cars. The lights of Philadelphia seem to diminish the fierce smudges of starlight not at all, and the night sky is a sea of swirling velvet blacks and midnight blues.

_Tomorrow's going to be a beautiful day,_ she thinks, even though she knows it's probably going to be muggy and maybe a little bit rainy, the same as it's been all week.

But something about that vast sky gives her hope.

Becky turns off her desk lamp, and then slowly picks her way through her darkened apartment, tired, and ready for bed.


	4. Epilogue

  
"I'm just saying, Sam, there's better ways to balance your books than _manually_. There are computer programs that help you, now! Embrace the modern age!"

"I _have_ 'embraced the modern age,'" Sam grunts, taking a deep breath and then shoving his shoulder against the chest of drawers as hard as he can. It scrapes across the carpet, and then finally comes to a rest just inside their new apartment.

_Their_ apartment. Jesus Christ. Sometimes he still wakes up in the morning and can't believe that this is his life. This is reality.

"Just because you _can_ do something doesn't mean you should," Sam teases, wiping sweat from his forehead and flicking it at Gabriel. He gets a grimace in response, Gabriel dramatically wiping away imaginary perspiration from his cheek. Gabriel moving to Philadelphia means more commuting, and less money, but it also means that Sam gets to see him sans tie and cufflinks five days out of seven.

It also means that this is serious. They're _living_ together. It's not just Gabriel calling every day in order to talk, trying to figure out a way to leave New York without committing career suicide. Not just sending each other emails. Gabriel is serious enough about this that he's willing to pack up his entire life, thirty-six _years_ of life, and drag it all down to hot, muggy, noisy Philadelphia.

Sam is continuously _astounded_ by this.

"Hey, you need help with money, I happen to advise people who need help with money…"

"I do _not_ need financial help," Sam bitches, and gives the chest one more halfhearted push before he gives up. Gabriel will help him eventually, when he feels like it, and Sam doesn't really mind waiting. They've got the entire bedroom set up except for the drawers, the living room needs to be organized but all the furniture is present and accounted for…All they need to do is hang up a few pictures, arrange a few curios, and it'll be home.

Sam wanders into the bedroom, and Gabriel follows him, lecturing. For the most part, Gabriel is perfectly content with Sam, with what he does, with how he lives. But there's an aspect to Gabriel's personality that _always has to be right_, and it comes out most frequently when the subject of money is broached. Sam is usually pretty good about ignoring it (Gabriel means well, even if he's sort of a jackass about it), but when that fails, he's found that he's becoming increasingly good at _distracting_ Gabriel. Usually by derailing his current train of thought.

"…The bookstore is a good idea, people go for the quaint indie look these days, but math isn't your strong point, and don't tell me otherwise because I've _seen_ your notes…"

Sam pulls his shirt over his head, and then (because it needs to be washed anyways) uses it to mop sweat from his shoulders and chest.

Hey, it worked before, didn't it?

"…And you really ought to…" Gabriel trails off, and Sam knows without looking that he's following the rippling movements of Sam's shoulders, the trickle of sweat that winds its way down Sam's left pectoral. Gabriel, for all that he dislikes getting his own hands dirty, is sort of irrationally fond of seeing _Sam_ sweaty and looking like a hot mess.

Sam uses this to his advantage, and absolutely refuses to feel guilty about it.

"Hm?" He hums, questioning. "I really ought to what?"

He turns just in time to see Gabriel's shoulders tense, like a cat getting ready to pounce, and then Gabriel is grabbing his wrist and tugging him towards their newly-assembled IKEA bed, complete with mattress, sheets, and pillows (twenty-five percent off if bought together).

"I think you ought to lie down and let me ride you like it's my birthday, that's what," Gabriel says, and Sam realizes, sort of abruptly, that it's been roughly five months since they met, and they have never once seen each other fully naked. They've spent five months being _celibate_, save for their own hands.

"Uh," he says, and nearly breaks his neck trying to shove his pants down before he realizes he's still wearing a belt, not to mention shoes and socks. He frantically toes them off, managing to remove both shoes and one bright red sock before Gabriel pushes him back, pushes him until his legs bump the edge of the bed. He fastens his mouth to the curve of Sam's shoulder and laughs there, smug and a little bit dirty as his clever hands drift down and deftly slip Sam's belt from around his waist, the soft _fwip_ of the leather loud in the otherwise silent room. Sam desperately tries to remember where he put the condoms and lube.

_Nightstand,_ his muzzy brain informs him. _You always put them in the nightstand._

"We've never really…talked about this," Sam says faintly, while Gabriel unbuttons his jeans and then pushes them impatiently over Sam's hips. "I mean, I don't know…have you ever…?" Gabriel presses the heel of his hand against the tented front of Sam's briefs, and it becomes exponentially more difficult to form words that aren't 'yes' and 'God' and '_please_.'

"There were never any guys before you," Gabriel breathes against his neck. His hand presses down, palming the hot swell of Sam's cock through sweat-damp cotton. It's viciously, shamelessly good, and Sam lets his mouth fall open in a shuddering moan. "I might have done some research."

"Oh God," Sam hisses, and grabs for Gabriel's hand, yanks it up before he comes in his briefs like he's sixteen again. "I seriously don't think that's a good idea, Gabriel."

Gabriel pauses. "If you think we should _wait_ or something…"

"What? No, no more waiting. Definitely no more waiting." He's babbling, Sam can tell, because Gabriel is fixing him with that look that says 'I think you're adorable even as I think you're probably a little bit brain-damaged.' Sam huffs, and then tugs Gabriel closer, sends them both tumbling to the bed with soft sounds of pressure and heat and the slide of Sam's skin against Gabriel's shirt and slacks. Sam reaches for Gabriel's fly, popping the button and drawing the zip down as Gabriel, chuckling, kicks his feet and sends his shoes flying across the room. They'll find them later.

"Then what do you mean, 'this isn't a good idea?' It's an _awesome_ idea. You, me, fucking. I fail to see anything wrong with that sentence."

"Except for the part where you've never done this before," Sam says, curls his hand into the warmth of Gabriel's slacks. Gabriel wears boxers, and Sam is unsurprised. It makes it easier for Sam to reach inside and rub his thumb against the head of Gabriel's dick, unencumbered by fabric. Gabriel gasps like it's been punched out of him, and starts struggling to break the Guinness Book record for 'shortest amount of time in which one can unbutton a shirt.'

"I think you should fuck me," Sam says.

Gabriel's efforts to remove his shirt increase roughly tenfold. Sam laughs, bats Gabriel's shaking hands away and pops the buttons slow, one at a time, until he can push the shirt off Gabriel's shoulders and let it fall over the edge of the bed, lost. Gabriel doesn't have the bulk that Sam does – he's mostly lean, but broad in the shoulders and a little soft in the belly, with sparse, dark brown hair covering his chest. He's almost the opposite of Sam, who's never been anything but smooth.

"_Sam_," Gabriel says, yearning and a little bit broken, hips stutter-starting against Sam's palm. He curves his free hand against Gabriel's neck and draws him into a kiss.

"I know you've got more experience with women than I do," Sam murmurs into Gabriel's mouth. "You're more experienced with a lot of things. But _this_, I can do. I want you inside me, Gabe. Will you?"

Gabriel responds by shoving Sam back into the bed and trying to remove Sam's brain matter with his mouth, his tongue, his teeth. Gabriel nips at Sam's lips until he opens for him, until he lets his legs sway apart and his hands fall to the sheets, clutching them as Gabriel reaches down and shoves his boxers and slacks out of the way, kicking them off, and then peels Sam's sticky briefs away from his skin, pushes them down his hips and leaves them stretched around his thighs.

"You have," Gabriel breathes, "the _prettiest_ dick."

Sam wants to laugh, except it comes out as more of a moan. "You have like, absolutely no knowledge of what to compare my dick to, Gabriel. My junk might be all stunted and gross, you don't know."

Gabriel curls his fingers around the base of Sam's cock, rubbing his thumb over the fat, flushed head, smearing precome over the too-hot skin. Sam's pretty sure his eyes roll back into his head.

"Now you're just lying," Gabriel huffs. "Now tell me what to do."

Sam pushes at Gabriel's shoulder until the weight of him eases away, then awkwardly flips himself over onto his stomach, wriggling until his briefs inch far enough down his legs that he can better ignore them. He cants his hips up, moaning when his cock rubs against the warm sheets. Sam can hear Gabriel's breath shudder from between his teeth; he glances over his shoulder, at the heavy sway of Gabriel's balls, his dick flushing increasingly darker.

"In the nightstand," Sam says, "there's condoms, and some lube. Get them out."

Oh Jesus, he had no idea how _sexy_ this was going to be, telling Gabriel what to do, _instructing_ him. But seeing Gabriel nod and then instantly reach for the nightstand, not even pausing to palm his own cock along the way, makes Sam spread his legs in anticipation. It's been a long time since he's fucked anything larger than his fingers, and Sam would be lying if he said he wasn't at all ambivalent. But the desire curling at the base of his spine is far, far stronger.

The drawer opens, closes, and then Gabriel curves his palm against the jut of Sam's hip, gripping, proprietary. Sam can see the glint of the little foil packets in Gabriel's other hand.

"All right," Gabriel sighs. "Now I just…"

Sam leans his weight on one elbow, reaching back to encourage Gabriel's palm to move over the swell of his ass. Gabriel's breath catches as he experimentally kneads his fingertips against Sam's skin. "Now, spread some lube on your fingers. Get them really slippery." Sam huffs laughter into the curve of his own arm. "Thought you said you researched this?"

"I did," Gabriel protests. Sam hears foil tearing, and the sound of lube smearing across Gabriel's fingers. "Just…sort of from the other end. It's mostly common sense, though."

"There's probably a pun in there, somewhere," Sam says, and then hisses when one lube-tacky finger nudges between his cheeks, paints a cool stripe of slickness across his asshole. Jesus, it's been a _while_. He hasn't even done this for himself in…about four or five months, yeah. Which, seriously, it figures that Sam is subconsciously the devoted, celibate virgin waiting for the equivalent of his _wedding night_.

_Gabriel in a tuxedo,_ he thinks, hot-cold shivers rushing over his skin. _That's not bad._

And then Gabriel presses his finger forward, and Sam sort of loses the ability to think at all.

"Oh fuck," he says, right on the heels of Gabriel's "Jesus Christ, you're _tight_." Sam forces himself to relax, rocking back into the gentle pressure of Gabriel's finger, curling inside him. The lube is body-warm, now, and Gabriel curves over him, kneeling between his spread legs with his cock resting against Sam's thigh, hot, smearing his skin with precome.

Gabriel makes a low, feral sound in the back of his throat, a counterpoint to the soft, panting gasps that Sam knows he's making.

"I'm not gonna fit," Gabriel exhales, shaky and disbelieving. "No fucking way."

"I can't believe you've never done this with a girl before," Sam laughs, and Gabriel crooks his finger in retaliation, nudging close to Sam's prostate, but not touching. That shuts him up pretty quickly.

"All right," Sam breathes, "now two fingers. Take…take it out, and use some more lube." He vastly prefers the idea of sliding around all night to being too sore to walk for the rest of the weekend. Gabriel is _big_ (Sam isn't about to say that within earshot, though, because Gabriel will be insufferably smug about it for the rest of his natural life), and Sam doesn't want to take any chances.

He barely has time to get used to the feeling of Gabriel sliding out of him before he's nudging two fingers in again, pressing them close and begging his way inside. Sam tilts his hips up, gasping, because he hadn't been aware of how much he'd missed the stretch until he felt it again. "S-spread them," he stammers, and Gabriel obediently scissors his fingers apart, little by little, until he can dip further, press the pad of one finger against Sam's prostate.

Sam sees _stars_.

"_Fuck_," he says again, lets his head hang down as Gabriel eases the tight muscle into looseness. Sam already feels sloppy and wet with lube, but there's no way in hell he's going to stop now.

"Three," he begs, "three fingers, please Gabe, I need it."

"We need to have a talk about you calling me 'Gabe,'" Gabriel laughs, but the next second Sam feels pressure, and the stretch is a burn now, a long, slow, aching burn that has him desperately resisting the urge to thrust into the sheets, because if he does he knows it'll be over like _that_. He's not going to last long as it is – he doubts Gabriel will, either. They've been waiting too long.

Gabriel's fingers spread apart, blunt, mercilessly rubbing against Sam's prostate, every nerve flaring to life beneath the press of Gabriel's fingertips. Sam pulls a pillow closer, presses his face to it and sighs and sobs and makes all the noises that he feels vaguely ashamed of having crammed up inside him in the first place. But it's been so long, and he's been alone, all this time. He thinks he can be forgiven.

"Now," he says, muffled, and then turns his head to the side so that his face isn't buried in the pillow. "I'm ready, Gabriel, _please_."

"Hold your horses," Gabriel mutters. Tearing foil. A short, sharp hiss of breath – Gabriel rolling down the condom. It's probably not very warm. Sam has the fanciful image of using his mouth to roll the condom down, next time, even though it's not something he's ever done before and he'll probably end up tearing it or something.

And then, _oh_. Blunt pressure, so much bigger than fingers, and the head of Gabriel's cock nudges forward, slow and careful and exactly what Sam needs. He's hot, he's fucking _blazing_, and by the time Gabriel has bottomed out Sam's pretty sure his insides are made of fucking _lava_.

"Christ," he whispers, and then, "_Gabriel._ Just…just gimme a second." He can barely talk. His tongue feels about three inches too thick.

"Yeah," Gabriel agrees, voice shaky. "This is…_this_."

"Uh huh."

They remain that way, perfectly still, for what seems like hours (but it's really, probably, only a minute or two). Then Gabriel makes a noise, whisper-soft, that Sam thinks might be a groan.

"Can I," he says, and hesitantly shifts, cock rubbing all the right places inside him. Sam doesn't even have the brain cells left to agree, can only move back into the movement and hope that Gabriel takes it as approval, because he's this close to telling Gabriel that he loves him, and he's fairly certain that five months is still pretty early for that, possibly. It took him almost a _year_ to tell Jessica.

Gabriel cups his hand, his still lube-sticky hand, against Sam's hip, and pulls him back, rocking into him, and Sam is amazed that, of all the people Gabriel could get, with his wit and his sense of humor and his experience, Sam is the one who gets to have him.

Gabriel thrusts forward, one long, slow slide, and Sam presses his mouth into the pillow and mouths _I love you, I love_ into the cotton. Gabriel is a cover of warmth over his back, a near-perfect curve, and his breath gusts against Sam's neck, hot and heavy, the weight of his balls slapping against Sam's.

Sam turns his head, breathes in the too-hot air. "Fuck me," he says, and Gabriel does.

It lasts precisely as long as Sam had thought it would; they're both too wound-up for anything another than a brief spike of pleasure, and then the relief of orgasm. Gabriel builds up to a pounding rhythm that has their shitty bed rocking back and forth against the wall, and if they have neighbors who are currently at home Sam is going to have to bring them an apology fruit basket or something, because it's not like they're _trying_ to be quiet. Gabriel moans like a porn star and Sam makes these stupid, breathy "Ah, _ah_" noises that Gabriel will probably make fun of later. When Gabriel slams his hips forward and connects directly with Sam's prostate, he's pretty sure that he _screams_. It's a blur of sweat and want and this endless, aching pleasure, so strong that Sam's surprised they don't just _combust_ from it. He fists one hand in the sheets and reaches beneath himself with the other, only to find that Gabriel has beat him to it, has curled his sticky fingers around Sam's cock and is jacking him off in the best fucking way possible. They've now officially had sex _once_, and Gabriel already knows, somehow, _intuitively_, how to touch Sam in order to make him come so hard that he passes out.

Which is precisely what he does, by the way. The last thing he's aware of is Gabriel stiffening over him, saying something – "Sam" and "Please" and Sam is almost certain that he hears "Love you," but that's probably a hallucination.

Sam blinks, and then he's opening his eyes to Gabriel's worried face, and apparently he's been rolled onto his back.

"I don't know whether I should take that as a compliment or an insult," he says, once it's apparent that Sam isn't going to pass out again any time soon. Sam stretches, his body one long and lovely ache, and then rolls them both onto their sides, tossing his leg over Gabriel's waist (ignoring the squawk of protest he gets in exchange).

"That was amazing," Gabriel says, and Sam quiets him with a kiss, slow, languorous. There's come all over his stomach and his ass feels loose and slippery and, God help him, _well-fucked_. He's going to look like the worst Walk of Shame ever if he tries to go out and check their new mailbox in the morning.

"You have lube in your hair," Gabriel says, casually, sort of like mentioning the weather.

Sam makes a pissed-off noise and thumps him on the shoulder, then shoves him off the bed.

"Go get a washcloth before we both start crusting," he demands, and Gabriel wrinkles his nose but dutifully pads, naked, into the adjoining bathroom. Sam hears the sink running, and thinks that it would be just like Gabriel to bring back a cold towel, just to be obnoxious.

"I love you," Sam says. It sounds…good. Not forced. Not like something he's saying just to keep up appearances. He says it again, experimentally, so quiet that he's almost a hundred percent positive that Gabriel won't be able to hear him.

Not yet, anyway.


End file.
